POLITIZINE.COM

Iran: The Neocons Are At It Again

2012-01-15T09:46:00.000-05:00

In the Public Interest by Ralph Nader 1/11/12

The same neocons who persuaded George W. Bush and crewto, in Ron Paul’s inimitable words, “lie their way into invading Iraq” in 2003,are beating the drums of war more loudly these days to attack Iran. It isremarkable how many of these war-mongers are former draft dodgers who wantedother Americans to fight the war in Vietnam.

With the exception of Ron Paul, who actually knows thehistory of U.S.-Iranian relations, the Republican presidential contenders havedeclared their belligerency toward Iranian officials who they accuse of movingtoward nuclear weapons.

The Iranian regime disputes that charge, claiming theyare developing the technology for nuclear power and nuclear medicine.

The inspection teams of the International Atomic EnergyAuthority (IAEA) that monitor compliance with the Nuclear Non-ProliferationTreaty, to which Iran belongs, have entered Iran numerous times and, whileremaining suspicious, have not been able to find that country on the directroad to the Bomb.

While many western and some Arab countries in the Gulfregion have condemned Iran’s alleged nuclear arms quest, Israel maintains some200 ready nuclear weapons and has refused to sign the non-proliferation treaty,thereby avoiding the IAEA inspectors.

Israelis in the know have much to say. Defense minister,Ehud Barak, responded to PBS’s Charlie Rose’s question “If you were Iranwouldn’t you want a nuclear weapon?” with these words:

“Probably, probably. I don’t delude myself that they aredoing it just because of Israel. They have their history of 4,000 years. Theylook around and they see the Indians are nuclear. The Chinese are nuclear,Pakistan is nuclear as well as North Korea, not to mention the Russians.”

The Iranian regime, with a national GDP smaller thanMassachusetts, is terrified. It is surrounded by powerful adversaries,including the U.S. military on three of its borders. President George W. Bushlabeled Iran, along with Iraq and North Korea, one of the three “axis of evil,”and Teheran knows what happened to Iraq after that White House assertion. Theyalso know that North Korea inoculated itself from invasion by testing nuclearbombs. And all Iranians remember that the U.S. overthrew their popular electedPrime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 and installed the dictatorial Shahwho ruled tyrannically for the next 27 years.

Recently, Iran has experienced mysterious cyber sabotage,drone violations of its air space, the slaying of its nuclear scientists andthe blowing up of its military sites, including a major missile installation.Israeli and American officials are not trying too hard to conceal this lowlevel warfare.

Israel military historian—strategist Martin van Creveldsaid in 2004, that Iranians “would be crazy not to build nuclear weaponsconsidering the security threats they face.” Three years later he stated that “theworld must now learn to live with a nuclear Iran the way we learned to livewith a nuclear Soviet Union and a nuclear China….We Israelis have what it takesto deter an Iranian attack. We are in no danger at all of having an Iraniannuclear weapon dropped on us…thanks to the Iranian threat, we are gettingweapons from the U.S. and Germany.”

U.S. General John Abizaid is one of numerous militarypeople who say that the world can tolerate a nuclear Iran—which, like othercountries, does not wish to commit suicide.

Using the “Iranian threat,” served Israeli Prime MinisterNetanyahu, who on his first tour of duty back in 1996, speaking to a jointsession of Congress, made a big point of the forthcoming Iranian bomb.

Somehow the Iranians, who were invaded in 1980 by aU.S.-backed Saddam Hussein, resulting in a million casualties, and who have notinvaded anybody for 250 years, are taking a very long time to build acapability for atomic bomb production, much less the actual weapons.

In mid-2011, Meir Dagan, recently retired head ofIsrael’s “CIA,” repeated his opposition to a military attack on Iran’s nuclearfacilities, adding it would engulf the region in a conventional war.

He further took the Israeli government to task forfailing “to put forth a vision,” noting that “Israel must present an initiativeto the Palestinians and adopt the 2002 Saudi Arabia peace proposal, reiteratedsince, that would open full diplomatic relations with some two dozen Arab andIslamic countries in return for an Israeli pullback to the 1967 borders andrecognition of a Palestinian state.

The war-mongers against Iran have often distorted Iranianstatements to suit their purpose and kept in the shadows several friendlyIranian initiatives offered to the George W. Bush Administration.

Flynt L. Leverett, now with Brookings and before a StateDepartment and CIA official, listed three initiatives that were rejected. Rightafter the Sept. 11 attacks, Iran offered to help Washington overthrow theTaliban. The U.S. declined the offer. Second, in the spring of 2003, topIranian officials sent the White House a detailed proposal for comprehensivenegotiations to resolve questions regarding its weapons programs, relationswith Hezbollah and Hamas and a Palestinian peace agreement with Israel. Thisproposal was rebuffed and ignored.

Third, in October 2003, European officials secured anagreement from Iran to suspend Iranian uranium enrichment and to pursue talksthat Mr. Leverett said “might lead to an economic, nuclear and strategic deal.”The Bush administration “refused to join the European initiative, ensuring thatthe talks failed,” he added.

A few days ago, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta saidIran was developing a capability for making nuclear weapons someday but was notyet building a bomb. So why is the Obama Administration talking about a westernboycott of Iran’s oil exports, so crucial to its faltering, sanctions-riddeneconomy? Is this latest sanction designed to squeeze Iranian civilians and leadto the overthrow of the regime? Arguably it may backfire and produce moresupport for the government.

Backing the Iranian regime into such a fateful cornerrisks counter-measures that may disrupt the gigantic flow of oil through theStrait of Hormuz. Should that occur, watch the prices of your gasoline, heatingbill and other related products go through the roof—among other consequences.

Isn’t it about time for the abdicatory Congress toreassert its constitutional responsibilities? It owes the American peoplecomprehensive, public House and Senate hearings that produce knowledgeabletestimony about these issues and all relevant history for wide media coverage.

The drums of war should not move our country into apropagandized media frenzy that preceded and helped cause the Iraq invasionwith all the socio-cide in that country and all the costly blowbacks againstU.S. national interests?

It is past time for the American citizenry to wake up anddeclare: Iran will not be an Iraq Redux!

Is Best Buy going under?

2012-01-03T09:06:00.002-05:00

Interesting column here from Forbes: ["Why Best Buy is Going out of Business...Gradually"].
It is (or was) bound to happen when you consider what is going on in the world, especially with music, books, soon movies, and other types of products that can be downloaded or purchased online. The big chain stores - that gobbled up all the business from the small stores - are going to go the way of the dinosaur at some point. What goes around comes around, as the saying goes.

There is one problem with his column, I think, and I didn't bother registering to sign up to comment on the Forbes site to leave a comment, and that's the fact that the inventory problem at Best Buy - and other places, if you were looking for specific items and couldn't find them, was based more on a surprise burst of shopping (i.e. confidence) by consumers, and not mismanagement. Retailers didn't have a ton of things on hand because they assumed no one was buying anything. And then, when they started buying stuff, both in stores and online, they quickly ran out.
I found this out the hard way on two different items I was looking for while shopping for my kids. In the end, I had to pay slightly more than the cheapest price for one of the items, since it was the only e-tailer with the item in stock. It was worth it though since the kids haven't stopped playing with the gift. If I had purchased it a bit earlier, I might have saved the money. I actually spent a lot of time trying to find the item in an actual store, so I could look at it, but it was never found.
In the end, the larger point is that the retail sales part of our economy is ever-changing, as it has in the past. It will change even more. Right now, consumers seem to be in the driver's seat a bit, decided what they will and will not spend money on. If big corporations like Best Buy don't make it, not unlike Circuit City, Lechmere, Strawberries, Crazy Eddie, etc., so be it.

A $4 million vaca? Really?

2012-01-01T08:43:00.000-05:00

It looks like it: ["With More Vacation Days and Separate Travel, Price of Obama’s Annual Hawaiian Holiday Rises"].
In fairness, the president, or any president actually, can vacation wherever they like. But this is getting a bit ridiculous. Jetting off here; traveling over there; playing golf there, etc. The next thing you'll read is the Democrats blaming Republicans for the high cost of the vacation because they stalled a bill which kept Obama from leaving with Michele or something trivial like that.

For all the comparisons of this presidency to Jimmy Carter's, I don't really think that's fair, to Carter. During that economic collapse, Carter installed solar panels on the roof of the White House, turned down the thermostat to conserve energy, and put on a sweater and went on television showing everyone in America that he was at least trying. I don't know, but has this guy done anything to try set an example? I thought I read somewhere that he was mailing donation checks to people who had written to him about their economic difficulties, which is an exceedingly nice thing to do.
But how about a national example? We're not going on vacation for the holidays because millions of other Americans aren't vacationing and we need to set an example of sacrifice during difficult times. Isn't that kinda what we need right? Our leaders setting examples of sacrifice? Just a thought.

Oh, and by the way, Happy New Year everyone! 2011 was a pretty good year for me, personally. Here's hoping 2012 is just as good!

Why you should keep everything ...

2011-12-26T08:42:00.002-05:00

at least if you're a reporter, journalist, interviewer, or whatever. You never know when you might need the information again. Take this piece from the Washington Post by Bob Woodward: ["In his debut in Washington’s power struggles, Gingrich threw a bomb"].
There are only two pages of the article available online - you have to pay for the rest - but you get the idea.
It's interesting that Woodward, who is probably better known now for his books than any reporting he did in the old days, never published this interview. Maybe he was working on a Republican revolution book that he never finished; maybe he sensed something was in the water.

The most unfortunate thing is that reporters like this are dying off. Newspapers just don't have the money anymore to have a person on staff who does the more serious types of journalism that are needed today. Well, I guess I should correct myself here, many newspaper companies do have the money to keep these types of employees on staff but instead, they are paying their CEOs, CFOs, and others unbelievable amounts of money and bonuses to run the companies into the ground.
I was amazed to see some stats a few months back from one large company - you'd know it I said it; it has a big national daily - who was paying one CEO something in the neighborhood of $1.5 million while laying of a ton of reporters - the boots on the ground. It is the same as fighting a war without the necessary amount of soldiers because you're spending money on the generals. And, in many ways, journalism, regardless of how it changes, is like a war that needs to be fought.

Congressional Tyranny, White House Surrender

2011-12-16T23:12:00.000-05:00

Guest perspective By RalphNader/In the Public Interest

Paraphrasing Shakespeare, something is rotten in thestate of Capitol Hill. A majority of Congress is just about to put thefinishing touches on an amendment to the military budget authorizationlegislation that will finish off some critical American rights under ourConstitution.

Here is how two retired 4 star marine generals, CharlesC. Krulak and Joseph P. Hoar, described in the New York Times the stripminingof your freedom to resist tyranny in urging a veto by President Obama:

“One provision would authorize the military to indefinitelydetain without charge people suspected of involvement with terrorism, includingUnited States citizens apprehended on American soil. Due process would be athing of the past….

“A second provision would mandate military custody formost terrorism suspects. It would force on the military responsibilities ithasn’t sought”….”for domestic law enforcement….”

“A third provision would further extend a ban ontransfers from Guantanamo, ensuring that this morally and financially expensivesymbol of detainee abuse will remain open well into the future.”

All of Obama’s leading military and security officialsoppose this codification of the ultimate Big Brother power. Imagine allowingthe government to deny people accused of involvement with terrorism (undefined),including U.S. citizens arrested within the United States, the right to a trialby jury. Imagine allowing indefinite imprisonment for those accused withouteven proffering charges against them. Goodbye 5th and 6th Amendments.

On some government agency’s unbridled order: just pickthem up, arrest them without charges and throw them into the military brigindefinitely. This atrocity deserves to be repeatedly condemned loudlythroughout the land by Americans who believe in the rights of due process,habeas corpus, right to confront your accusers, right to a jury trial—in short,liberty and the just rule of law.

Some stalwart lawyers are speaking out soundly: Theyinclude Georgetown Law Professor, David Cole, George Washington University LawProfessor, Jonathan Turley, Republican lawyer, Bruce Fein, former American BarAssociation (2005-2006) president, Michael Greco, and the always alert lawyersat the civil liberties groups. Their well-grounded outcries are not awakeningthe citizenry.

Where are the one million lawyers? Where are thethousands of law professors? Where are the scores of law school deans? Are theynot supposed to be our first constitutional responders?

Where is the Tea Party and its haughty rhetoric about thesanctity of constitutional liberty? Most of the Tea caucus voted for tyranny.Presidential candidate, Rep. Ron Paul has been an outspoken critic of thisattack on our civil liberties.

The majority also voted to ratify a dictatorial procedurein the Congress, as well. This indefinite, arbitrary, open-ended dictatorialWhite House mandate was never subjected to even a House or Senate Committeehearing, and was not explained with any rationale known as legislative“findings.” It was rammed through by the House and Senate Armed ServicesCommittees without the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees invoking theirconcurrent jurisdiction for public hearings.

So extreme are these majority Congressional extremists,composed of both Republicans and renegade Democrats, the latter led by SenatorCarl Levin, that the Obama Administration has to lecture them about thefundamental American principle that “our military does not patrol our streets.”

It is not as if the imperial presidencies of Bush andObama need any more encouragement and legitimization to continue on theirlawless paths to criminal wars of aggression, unlawful surveillance, arbitraryslayings of innocents, wrongful imprisonments, and unauthorized spending.Instead of Congress using its constitutional authority regarding the war,appropriations and investigative powers, it formalizes its impotence by handingthe “go for it” power to the Executive branch with the vaguest of languageboundaries.

Usually there are a few Senators whose upfront defense ofour Constitution would lead them to stand tall against the “Senate Club” andput a “hold” on this pernicious amendment. Civil libertarians hope that, beforethe final Senate vote in the rush to get home for the Holidays, Senators RandPaul, Tom Harkin, Al Franken, Richard Blumenthal, Ron Wyden, Bernie Sanders,Jeff Merkley, Tom Coburn or Mike Lee would step forth.

A “hold” could spark the demand for public hearings andfloor debate to give the American people the time and information to react andask themselves “how dare Congress take away our most fundamental rights?”

President Obama initially threatened to veto the entirebill and make Congress drop these pernicious dictates that so insult the memoryand vision of our founding fathers. He is already signaling that he doesn’thave the backbone to reject the false choice “between our safety and ourideals,” that he asserted in his Inaugural Address.

More data about the Top 1% and income inequality

2011-12-10T10:24:00.001-05:00

Finally catching up on issues of the WSJ that have been sitting around this week and found this piece from Dec. 6, to be quite interesting: ["Tax Rates, Inequality and the 1%"].
While one might find anything written by a fellow from the Cato Institute suspect, there are a few nuggets of truth in here that are worthy of further analysis.
First, the share of income increased by the Top 1% post 1979 seems to not be as drastic as first thought, especially when looking post 2007. It's 11.3 percent not 17 percent, according to Alan Reynolds' analysis.

The Top 1%, according to the IRS, earn about $380,000 a year. In other words, they are good doctors, good lawyers, good and bad executives and CEOs, and money flippers on Wall Street who have a lot of money to flip around and earn a lot of money from flipping it around. It should be no surprise that their share of the income increased during the last 30 years by 11 or 17 percent. If you think back to 1979, most everyone probably has more income and wealth, even when figuring inflation, than they did in 1979. So these kinds of increases should not be surprising at all.

Second, in looking at the capital income chart, you'll see great increases in income when capital gains taxes are cut (currently 15 percent). This increase in income creates more taxes, based on the economic activity. This, however, is one of the big things we should be talking about when talking about tax reform. The argument over the income tax rate is a smokescreen. More progressives and liberals are obsessing over 35 vs. 39.5 percent, and totally ignore capital gains. The real benefit to "the rich" are gains made when flipping their money around, not their salaries. At the same time, admittedly, their salaries, especially the lower earners of the Top 1%, determine how much money they have to flip around. As example, if you're making $400,000 and you're taxed at 30%, you're giving the government $120,000. If your rate goes up to 40%, you're giving the government $160,000. That extra $40,000 is taken out of the private sector economy. Let's say, for an example, that the $400K person invested that money instead of gave it to the government and it doubled. The government would get 15% of the $40,000 - $6,000 - and there would economic activity generated too.
But as with everything in life, each action has a reaction. If one aims to hurt the rich, going after capital gains is the way to do it. But that will also harm economic growth which harms everyone because there is less money in the pool for innovation, investment, job creation, etc. It might create more money for government, but that doesn't create wealth or sustainability for the person who is having her money taken away or the society at large.
Having said all that, my personal philosophy is that we need comprehensive tax reform and then we need to leave well enough alone and stop tinkering with things. People and businesses should know what their three year, five year, and 20 year tax outlooks are, so they can adjust accordingly. There should also be a return to import tariffs, a form of revenue generation the federal government consistently relied on up until a couple of decades ago.
There also needs to be a restructuring of the size of the federal government, starting with defense cuts and foreign entanglements and working down. One of the most disappointing things about the Obama Administration is the failure to live up to the campaign promise that every single government line item would be analyzed and eliminated if deemed unnecessary. There is so much waste, fraud, and abuse in the system, it's unfathomable. There are layers upon layers of federal government employees who do nothing but put a drain on the future of the country, both now, with their often overpaid incomes and later, with their pension and retirement benefits, a multi-trillion dollar catastrophe that is coming soon.
Then, after reforming taxes and restructuring the government, there should be a laser beam focus on paying down the national debt and sustaining Social Security for the X-er generation.
Lastly, obsessing about what "the rich" make or don't make is a waste of time in my mind and doesn't bring our country to true solutions. As well, as has been repeatedly shown, you can take all the money from the rich - every last penny - and still not filled the holes. And, it's not the government's money to take anyway. Let's try and work together to find solutions, instead of creating and fomenting jealousy and divide.

Closing down the Noise chart

2011-12-05T06:17:00.000-05:00

Late last month, TMax from the Noise emailed me to say that due to space limitations, he probably wasn't going to have room for Top 30 chart in this month's edition of the Noise. I told him that wasn't a problem since my computer was being fixed and I didn't have access to all the data and wouldn't have made the deadline this month.
We got to chatting over email and came to a decision that we should probably stop producing the chart. It had gotten cumbersome, since few radio stations were sending me the lists - I'd have to hunt them down or do audits on various websites - and I was missing the deadline for the print edition repeatedly. I have promised him that I will put together a top list of the year for the online edition, and then, we're going to call it a day.
Almost 10 years of tracking Boston radio station local music airplay. Quite an accomplishment, actually.

Not Made in America

2011-12-04T20:19:00.000-05:00

Guest perspective by Ralph Nader

"Here, look at this handsome L.L. Bean catalog andtell me what you want for Christmas," said a relative over Thanksgivingweekend. I started leafing through the 88 page cornucopia with hundreds ofclothing and household products, garnished by free gift cards and guaranteedfree shipping. I wasn't perusing it for any suggested gifts; instead, I wasgoing through every offering to see whether they were made in the U.S.A. or inother countries.

This is what I found: over 97 percent of all the itemspictured and priced were noted "imported" by L.L. Bean. The only onesmanufactured in the U.S. were fireplace gloves, an L.L. Bean jean belt, a dresschino belt, quilted faux-shearling-lined L.L. Bean boots (made in Maine), apersonalized web collar and leash (for your pet), and symbolically enough, the"made in Maine using American-made cotton canvas are the Original Boat andTote Bags" to carry all those goodies coming in from China and elsewhere.

That was it for the products that were "Made inAmerica." The former fountainhead of global manufacturing has been largelydeflated by the flight of U.S. companies to fascist or communist regimes notedfor holding down their repressed workers.

But there is much more to this story and the plight ofmillions of American workers and hundreds of their hollowed out communitiesthat are the visible results of corporate free trade propaganda.

How many times have the politicians and their corporatepaymasters told us that "free trade" with other nations is a"win-win" proposition? They win and we win. After all, isn't thatwhat happened two hundred years ago when Portugal sold its wine to England inreturn for British textiles? Economists have won many prizes elaborating thistheory of comparative advantage.

That is what Nobel laureate super-economist PaulSamuelson believed in the many years he wrote and updated his standard"Economics 101" textbook studied by millions of college students fornearly 50 years. For many of his colleagues, the theory of "free trade"had become an ideology bordering on a secular religion. Don't bother them withthe facts.

Some of their students became reporters, such as ThomasFriedman of "The New York Times," taking this prejudgment of realityinto their uncritical coverage of the very flawed NAFTA and World TradeOrganization agreements under President Clinton in the 1990s.

But Samuelson increasingly became an empiricist, alongwith his academic contributions in mathematical economics. Before one of hisbook revisions in the '70s, he wrote me asking for whatever materials I thoughtwould be useful regarding consumer protection and consumer fraud. He presagedthe relatively new field of behavioral economics and their obvious findingsthat consumers do not always maximize their best interests, and can act"irrationally" in a fast-paced marketplace of clever or unscrupuloussellers.

Gradually, Professor Sameulson saw trade between nationsmove from "comparative advantage" to more and more "absoluteadvantage." That is, companies were using the swift mobility of capital,modern factory machinery and transport to locate all elements of production -labor, capital, raw materials, and advanced know-how in one place - now mostnotably in China.

Absolute advantages have been aided by thecorporate-managed trade agreements of WTO and NAFTA. These treaties are alsoconveniently violated to facilitate large subsidies that are not supposed to beused to lure companies to move. This trade in giveaways has China winning overthe U.S., most recently in pulling American solar factories to China.

If corporate "free trade" is a win-win proposition,adhered to by one president after another, including Barack Obama, how come ourcountry has piled up bigger trade deficits every year since 1976? Big is reallybig. Over the past decade our country has bought from abroad more than it hassold an average of well over half a trillion dollars each year.

In 1980 the U.S. was the world leading creditor - theyowed us - while now, the U.S. is by far the world's leading debtor - we owethem!

At what point do the "free traders" cry"uncle" and rethink their commercial catechism? So long asmultinational corporations control our politicians, it will not happen. Forthese companies are looking for the most worker-controlled,environmentally-pollutable and bribable countries to locate their manufacturingbases. Global companies are just that, bereft of any allegiance or gratefulpatriotism to their country of birth, profit and bailout salvation.

Here are three questions you may wish to ask anyself-styled "free traders":

What amount of evidence do you require to get rid of yourdogma and, as a minimum, start thinking like Paul Samuelson?

How much of the savings from lower costs abroad are goingfor large profits and not being passed on to the consumer who also has toendure the reported hazards of unregulated imports?

And, at what point do you look at L.L. Bean-type catalogsand ask whether you are getting a price break that is worth the debilitatingdependency on other nations that use exploitation, repression, violations andoutright counterfeiting as unfair methods of competition against our statesidecompanies and workers?

Finalists for Lie of the Year

2011-12-04T07:46:00.001-05:00

I'm on the PolitiFact email list but I admit that I don't get a chance to read many alerts these days. I'm just too busy with other things.
However, while clearing out email earlier today, I came across this email offering PolitiFact's Lie of the Year: ["Finalists announced for 2011 Lie of the Year"].
There are some pretty good whoppers there, from both sides of the political spectrum. :-) Personally, I think Congressional Republicans have introduced dozens of bills on social issues and other topics, but "zero on job creation" and The stimulus created "zero jobs" are the best - or in this case, worst - ones. Enjoy!

The state of Occupy

2011-11-28T11:12:00.001-05:00

Editor's Note: Writer and political activist Steve Iskovitz has occasionally emailed around updates from Occupy Wall Street. I asked him recently if he minded if I posted them and he said No. So, here's his latest update, from Nov. 23:

It's been slow around here since my last post. Strange tosay this, since up to recently things have been frantic.

We're still hanging in, securing housing for ourselves andrunning meetings again. I went to a spokes council meeting the other night. Itwas kind of nice to see the process functioning. Spokes council is a cumbersomeprocess, but it's quite democratic. Of course, it's a messy process, lots ofarguments, and then the next day everyone else yells about the decisions made.Once you explain the reasons, they lower the volume of their yelling a bit. Isuppose groups making decisions about how to conduct themselves is by naturecomplicated and controversial and always will be.

The past few days in particular have been difficult. A lotof people arguing, about all kinds of things. I think this is partly becausewe're all stressed about not having a home, and partly because we're confusedabout our mission at this point. With Thanksgiving coming up it's unlikely muchwill be done about this in the next few days.

One on-going argument involves the kitchen and where to sendfood. I hear all kinds of rumors, and I don't go to their meetings, so I'm notan expert on the subject, but it seems a big part of the conflict is aboutwhether to send food to the park or not. Some people say everyone needs to befed, so send food to the park as well as the working groups and the churcheswhere people are staying. Others say just feed the working groups and thechurches and don't feed the people at the park, because they're not working,they're just hanging around being unproductive. In a sense, this is a holdoverof the old conflict that went on when we lived in the park, concerning the two"classes" of people in OWS-- working group members versus homelesspeople accused of not being part of the movement but just hanging aroud forfree stuff.

I think there's another aspect to this conflict, and I'vebegun voicing it around here. The question of sending resources to the parkunderscores the fact that we haven't really adapted to the raid yet. We have toask ourselves this question: Do we want to "keep" the park, or not?If we keep it, we have to make a conscientious decision to do so, and make areal presence there, complete with political signs, tabling, a message, apoint. Then when people show up they'll see something of substance, somethingof us, a reason for being there. If we decide to abandon it, we should put themessage out that the park is no longer ours, that that phase of our movement isover.

Of course, there are other questions within this larger one.If we stay there, just how will we maintain our presence, and if we leave,where will we go, how will we communicate our message. But these questions willbe easier once we address the main question. Avoiding this question, I think,is a big mistake, because it leaves us halfway in between. It makes us look bad,and it wastes our time and resources.

The current scene at the park is really pitiful. The metalgates surround it, with entrances on either side street, not on Broadway. Thisdiscourages the public from entering the park, which surely is the point. Ijust walked by a few minutes ago on the way to the library here, and there wereabout 20 people inside, and 10 or 15 outside the gate on Broadway. The peopleinside were smoking or just sitting around, the people on Broadway had somesigns, a 9/11 conspiracist, some religious speaker. There were almost as manyprivate security guards, and a few police. Some tourists, a camera team.

It's awful to even go by and witness this, which must be whyso few of us do. It gives the impression the movement is dead, that the policesucceeded in crushing us and that we're simply gone. This is not true, but inthe absence of a strong, focused on-line presence, this visual symbolismgoes a long way.

Hmm, running low on time here at the library, so let me makethis point: Losing the park a month or two would have been fatal to us, but bynow we've implanted our ideas into the consciousness of the nation and theworld to the point where that physical location isn't so necessary. Justyesterday I talked with people who are organizing an occupation in Utah andheard about Occupy Newark starting up, to name a few. As one person's signsaid, "You can't evict an idea."

Okay, all for now, and hopefully I'll have more substance for you all nexttime. Feel free to forward this around.

Instead of Occupy out, how about Occupy in?

2011-11-24T23:16:00.000-05:00

Guest Perspective by Ralph Nader

From New York City to Oakland, and several cities inbetween, the police, on orders from city officials, have smashed the Occupyencampments and evicted the protestors from public parks and spaces. Morepoliticians from Congress to the state and local level want the Occupy peopleOUT!

Well, why don't they start letting them into the placeswhere decisions are being made against their legitimate interests?

Let them INto:

Having jobs and affordable housing;

Their legislatures without having to pay to play;

The courts when they are wrongfully injured or have othergrievances without being blocked by corporatist dogmas and judges;

Access to civil lawyers pro bono when they are in direneed, as suggested by Cincinnati attorney Paul Tobias;

The dispensing and regulatory agencies with theirpetitions (without having to face grinding delays and costs);

Universal health care so they can escape the presentavariciousness called "pay or die";

Fair contracts, from student loans to mortgages, withoutfine print and gouging fees and robo-signing type shenanigans that trap theminto contract peonage (see FairContracts.org)

Fair and clean elections with voluntary public financingand easier ballot access for third party candidates to give voters more choicebeyond the two party dictatorship;

The media to express themselves on television, radio andin newspapers, so dominated by the plutocratic values of corporatism;

Public places to petition and circulate their materialsin these large malls that are taxpayer subsidized but considered off limitsbecause they are corporate owned;

The political process, with other citizens, with fullrights to challenge in courts and by referenda the politicians and theircorporate paymasters who unconstitutionally and illegally plunge our countryinto wars, invasions and occupations abroad;

A clean environment where they can breathe clean air,drink clean water and eat safe food by enforcing the existing laws with adequatebudgets;

The facilities to band together as workers, consumers andtaxpayers that exist for commercial companies and their investors;

There would be no need for encampments or streetdemonstrations if people were allowed IN to these arenas of power,communications and good livelihoods. You don't see corporate executives andmanagers protesting in the streets. Because they are already IN!

It has been said repeatedly that the Occupy Wall Streetmovement has no specific agenda. Look at their signs and banners. It isobvious; they want IN. They no longer want to be excluded, disrespected,unemployed, defrauded, impoverished, betrayed and in big and small ways OUT.

They want justice, opportunity and, as the ancient Romanlawyer Marcus Cicero advocated for, the freedom to participate in power.

The Road to Twenty One Presidential Debates in 2012

2011-11-05T08:24:00.000-04:00

In the Public Interest ByRalph Nader, 11/2/11

What people would not want Presidential Debates in multiplecities all over America in September and October 2012? Why, the people at theCommission on Presidential Debates (CPD). CPD is a private corporation createdin 1987. It is controlled by the Republican and Democratic Parties and acts asthe iron gatekeeper regarding the number of debates, who is chosen to ask thequestions and who is excluded from most important forums for reaching millionsof people interested in the presidential elections.

Powered by the television networks that transmit thedebates to the public, the CPD is set in concrete when it comes to entrenchingthe status quo for the two party dictatorship’s orchestrated bubble ofexclusion and manipulation.

Citizen groups such as Open Debates have exposed theCPD’s inner workings, picketed its Washington, D.C. headquarters and usedfederal courts to try to pry open the presidential debate process. Aside from amodest settlement and apology for one of its nasty transgressions, theCommission has emerged unchanged. After all it is a corporation that has mockedthe Bill of Rights and side-stepped the Federal Election Commission and IRSrules.

Presidential campaigns are repetitious, tedious, oftensterile and trivial. They narrow down to half a dozen issues many months beforeElection Day, ignore very important domestic and foreign subjects and publicnecessities by common implied consent. And they deliberately ignore local andregional matters.

Campaigns are so boring that the media jumps on sillycomments and gaffes and focuses on the almost daily polling to add some spiceto their monotonous campaign coverage of the “horse race”

True debates, rather than parallel interviews of the CPDmodel, would offer depth, variety, and unpredictability to counter the scriptednature of the candidates’ political consultants.

So, why ration debates? We need twenty-one debate sitesall over the country, ending this blue state-red state divide where over halfof the voters never see a major Presidential campaign in their states.Republicans have not campaigned, for example, in Massachusetts, New York andCalifornia and Democrats don’t bother with Texas, Alabama and Georgia.

From Maine to California and Alaska to Florida, citizensin cities and rural areas such as Appalachia and along the Rio Grande shouldband together to demand that the candidates crisscross the countryparticipating in debate after debate.

In each community, mayors, labor unions, chambers ofcommerce, farm organizations, religious groups, non-profits, charities andadvocacy organizations, neighborhood groups, good government associations andothers should band together and sign letters saying: “We want you to come toPortland, Oregon or Dallas, Texas, or Los Angeles, California, Pittsburgh, Pa.Miami, Florida or Chicago, Illinois or Cleveland, Ohio or Salt Lake City, Utahor Minneapolis, Minnesota or Clairton, Pennsylvania, Worcester, Massachusettsor Mingo County, West Virginia, or New Orleans, Louisiana.”

The Congressionally disenfranchised colony of theDistrict of Columbia deserves a presidential debate for its being denied simpledemocracy.

Each community would select its debate format, subjectsto be discussed, mode of interaction with the audience and other debatecriteria to generate excitement and engagement by Americans of all ages.

Suddenly the people--where they live and work--will shiftthe dynamic of shaping the Presidential races and agenda to them where itbelongs.

The celluloid slogans and sound bytes will be replaced bycandidate preparedness for each region or else risk losing political ground.

The community brainpower behind these debates will raisethe quality of these debate challenges to new heights.

Instead of the present, stifling, programmed threedebates by the CPD, these twenty one debates would throw aside many of thetaboos, bring the people into the process, address regional needs, excitelarger voter turnout and compel the candidates to be better, more forthrightcandidates. Reporters will have real news to report instead of having to strainto make stories out of mind-numbing redundancies.

Fresh agendas and personas will be allowed in thesedebates including third-party candidates who meet reasonable criteria of ballotpresence and public support. (SeeOpenDebates.org for the 2007 Appleseed Citizens’ Task Force on Fair Debates.)

Imagine three real debates a week for seven weeks betweenLabor Day and mid-October. Determined coalitions in one community after anotherthat stick together can make these candidates treat voters not as powerlessspectators but in one of Thomas Jefferson’s favorite words “participators.”

Representing tens of millions of Americans fromeverywhere, these grand and historic invitations would be very hard to turndown. (For more information, see No Debate: How the Republican and DemocraticParties secretly Control the Presidential Debates by George Farah, SevenStories Press 2004)

To get this grand series of nationwide debates realized,all we have to realize is that it is all in our hands. Here, the people havethe power. Your comments are welcome at info@nader.org.

Jesse Ventura to run ... or run for president ...

2011-11-04T21:22:00.000-04:00

"Ventura, miffed by court, says he's off to Mexico"

I personally hope he does the latter. The nation needs a powerful independent presidential candidate.

Occupy Wall Street is On the Move

2011-10-30T08:04:00.000-04:00

Guest perspective by Ralph Nader

The question confronting the Occupy Wall Streetencampments and their offshoots in scores of cities and towns around thecountry is quo vadis? Where is it going?

This decentralized, leaderless civic initiative hasattracted the persistent attention of the mass media in the past five weeks.Television cameras from all over the world are parked down at Zuccotti Park inlower Manhattan, two blocks from Wall Street.

But the mass media is a hungry beast. It needs to be fedregularly. Apart from the daily pressures of making sure the encampments areclean, that food and shelter are available, that relations with the police arequiet, that provocateurs are identified; the campers must anticipate possiblepolice crackdowns, such as that which has just occurred in Oakland, and findways to rebound.

There are enough national polls showing broader supportfor the Occupy people than for the Tea Party people. Additional communities areinstalling their own Occupy sites right down to small towns like Niles,Michigan (pop. 12,000) and Bethel, Alaska where Diane McEachern is occupyingthe tundra. But, there is trouble ahead.

First, police departments in other cities will be observingthe nature and reaction of mass arrests in places like Denver, Chicago andAtlanta. The plutocrats’ first response is always to push police power againstthe people. The recidivist violations of the ruling class are rarely pursued,yet the rumbles of the lower class are often stifled. With the onset of colderweather and looming police pressure, the protestors need new venues for theirdemonstrations

Activists need to vary their tactics. I suggest citizenssurround the local offices of their Senators and Representatives. The number ofAmericans fed up with a gridlocked Congress, beset by craven or cowardly, bothmarinated in corporate campaign cash, can motivate an endless pool of activistswho want their voices to be heard.

We know that the Occupy people want to keep theiropposition on a general level of informed outrage and not get to the specificpolicy level. Fine. The 535 people in Congress, who put their shoes on everyday like we do, are quite susceptible to a fast rising rumble from the people.They don’t need specifics. They know all about the savagely avariciouscorporate paymasters and their swarming lobbyists on Capitol Hill wanting evermore varieties of goodies and less corporate law enforcement. What they need toknow is that you’ve got their number and that people are fed up and on themove.

More members of Congress than one might expect, withtheir finger to the wind, start readjusting their antennas when they sensevoter agitation. It is just that for years, there has been nary a breeze fromthat crucial source, while the corporatists have had their party year afteryear with their governmental toadies on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Make no mistake; support for the power shift espoused bythe 99 percent movement is now only a breeze but a windstorm is coming. Theprotesters are feeling their way – demonstrating before big banks and closingout their accounts in favor of smaller community banks. Protests in front ofthe Manhattan mansions of the superrich from the big media and the big hedgefunds also make sense.

Each new protest gives the protesters new insights. Theprotestors are learning how to challenge controlling processes. They areassembling and using their little libraries on site. They are learning thetechniques of open, non-violent civil disobedience and building personalstamina. They are learning not to be provoked and thereby win the moralauthority struggle which encourages more and more people to join their ranks.

In the Arab Spring of Cairo, Egypt earlier this year, itwas said that a million people in Tahrir Square lost their fear of thedictatorship. It can be said that in this “American Autumn,” some 150,000people have discovered their power and rejected apathy. They have come far inso little time because the soil for their pushback is so fertile, nourished bythe revulsion of millions of their countrypersons moving toward standing up andshowing up themselves.

This vanguard of larger protests to come is building onthe personal stories of desperate but failed attempts to find work; stories ofheart-breaking inability to pay for healthcare for themselves or theirfamilies’; stories of being defrauded of their pensions, their tax dollars,their savings and their rights. They demand accountability for the culprits wholied, stole and got away with it destroying the economy. And they want Congressto never bailout the Wall Street crooks, swindlers and speculators withtaxpayer dollars.

Shining the light of the 99 percenters on the operationsbase of the corporate supremacists and their Congressional minions in onelocation after another both empowers and further informs those Americans whoare seeing that showing up is half of democracy.

"Jersey Shore" ... costumes ...

2011-10-29T20:07:00.002-04:00

This is so, so wrong, in so many ways I can't even explain it ... "Jersey Shore" costumes at Wal-Mart for $19.99. I wonder what their cut is for something like this. Is it like a CD royalty or something, maybe $1? $2? I mean, I guess they probably don't care what happens to their lives at this point, considering what goes on during the show. But really, a Halloween costume? That's downright scary! Boooooo!

November 2011 Top 30 Noise chart

2011-10-25T00:59:00.000-04:00

14 different radio andinternet stations reporting

1. The Grinds – Whatcha Lookin’At? EP

2. The Grownup Noise – ThisTime With Feeling

3. Juliana Hatfield – There’sAlways Another Girl

4. The Hush Now – memos

5. Eolune – Tiny Oceans EP

6. Tan Vampires – For PhysicalFitness s

7. Buffalo Tom – Skins

8. The Lights Out –Primetime

9. The Michael J. EpsteinMemorial Library – Volume One

10. Count Zero – Never BeYourself

11. The Diamond Mines – TheDiamond Mines

12. The Future Everybody –It Takes Nothing

13. Kingsley Flood – Dust Windows

14. The Fatal Flaw – NarrowHours

15. Freezepop – ImaginaryFriends

16. Blackout Mafia – TheDark Season

17. Guillermo Sexo – SecretWild

18. Gentlemen Hall – GiveUs Roots, Give Us Wings EP

19. Comanchero – The Undeserved

20. Ado – Ado

21. The Organ Beats –Mishmash

22. Full Body Anchor – The RestlessEP

23. Girls, Guns and Glory –Sweet Nothings

24. My Own Worst Enemy –Electric Like The Moon

25. The Rationales – The DistanceIn Between

26. Naked on Rollerskates –Naked on Rollerstakes

27. Deer Tick – The BlackDirt Sessions

28. Township – One MoreSummer

29. Ad Frank & The FastEasy Women – Your Secrets Are Mine Now

30. Bring the Knife – Bringthe Knife

Jill Stein to announce presidential run for Greens on Oct. 24

2011-10-21T10:31:00.000-04:00

Dr. Jill Stein, a two-time gubernatorial candidate for the Green-Rainbow Party in Massachusetts, will announce that she is running for president on Oct. 24, in Boston, at the State House.
The Lexington resident who has served as a Town Meeting member and also ran unsuccessfully for Secretary of State there, announced the presidential run in an email blast late last night.
"The coming year represents an extraordinary opportunity for the Green Party to emerge as the people's alternative to the incumbent parties who are servants of Wall Street," she stated, inviting people to get involved in the process with her and others.
Her site is JillStein.org.
Richard Winger of Ballot Access News told me earlier today that the Greens are on 15 state ballots and possibly 16, after Ohio grants them ballot access in the coming days. Building alliances with other third parties like what's left of the Reform Party and leftwing and progressive groups in other states could help the effort get on more state ballots.
I'll have more analytical comment about this later but I can tell readers that Stein is a relentless campaigner. She doesn't give up. She doesn't give long policy speeches (she gives short ones). Stein talks to people, fires them up and activates them, and then continues on and on and on. With money that can be raised via presidential matching funds, a lot of anxiety out there concerning the two major political parties, and a decent campaign team that focuses the traditional movement building-types into active electoral participants, she'll be a force in the next general election.
Photo courtesy of the Boston Herald.

Let Our Farmers Grow

2011-10-19T21:52:00.000-04:00

Guest perspective by Ralph Nader

Although Rep. Paul has introduced several bills like thisone in the past, there are several reasons that this bill should be passed now.Hemp has an amazing number of uses. Its fiber can be used in carpeting, homefurnishings, construction materials, auto parts, textiles, and paper. Its seedscan be used in food, industrial oils, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals. There areassertions, reported by The Guardian and in Biodiesel Magazine that usingindustrial hemp in biofuels instead of crops like corn and other feedstockprovide greater environmental benefits. The expansion of industrial hemp as afeedstock for biofuels could also help to reduce oil imports.

Not only does hemp have a wide range of uses, but itscultivation in the United States could help to spur our lagging economy. Sincethe cultivation of hemp is outlawed in the United States, the U.S. market forhemp and hemp-based products is entirely dependent upon imports. A 2010Congressional Research Service report cited an estimate that the U.S. marketfor hemp-based products may exceed $350 million annually.

A ban on the agricultural production of hemp simplydoesn’t make sense. Farmers in places like Iowa could benefit greatly from theproduction of industrial hemp. In a crippling recession, unemployed Americanscould receive a boost from such an emerging industry, from farm to value-addedbusinesses. And many firms here in the United States that sell hemp-basedproducts would reap the benefits. Currently they import their hemp from placeslike Canada, China, or France, which can increase their costs from 10 to 15percent or more. As the only remaining developed nation in which the productionof industrial hemp is not permitted, the United States is not only missing outon a large – and growing – global market, but limiting the livelihoods offarmers, processors and fabricators.

Industrial hemp could benefit our environment greatly. Arange of studies have shown the benefits: hemp can thrive with minimal – oreven without – herbicides, it reinvigorates the soil, and it requires lesswater than crops like cotton. Furthermore, it could prevent the deforestationof large portions of the U.S. landscape and presents significant benefitscompared with wood in the production of paper. Industrial hemp matures in threeto four months. It takes years for trees to grow. It can also yield four timesas much paper per acre as trees.

Critics of industrial hemp may point to its relation tomarijuana in order to claim that if one smokes industrial hemp, they can becomehigh. Although industrial hemp and marijuana share the same species, cannabissativa, industrial hemp is genetically and chemically different. Industrialhemp, at most, contains one third of 1 percent THC, the drug that produces apsychoactive effect in marijuana. However, marijuana is often between 10 and 30percent THC. Smoking industrial hemp will not make an individual high.

The DEA will claim that growing industrial hemp next tomarijuana may serve to impede law enforcement against the latter. However,countries that have legal cultivation of industrial hemp do not have similarproblems. Furthermore, since industrial hemp has such little THC, growing itnext to marijuana would only serve to dilute by cross pollinations the illegalmarijuana plants – something no marijuana grower wants.

Industrial hemp has a distinguished history in thiscountry dating before the revolution and its founding. The Declaration ofIndependence was drafted on hemp paper and George Washington and ThomasJefferson grew industrial hemp on their farms. During World War II, hemp wasused to make very strong rope and the Department of Agriculture made a film,“Hemp for Victory” to encourage its cultivation.

Despite the importance of this issue, we rarely see itdiscussed in the headlines or by political candidates. Farmers in Iowa couldbenefit greatly from the cultivation of industrial hemp. Citizens in Iowa, whohave the ear of presidential hopefuls, have an opportunity to move this issueback into the spotlight during the December 10th Republican PresidentialPrimary debate.

Let’s hope Congressman Paul and his fellow candidatesagree that it is time to allow farmers in Iowa and other states to once again startgrowing industrial hemp.

Obama's Pipeline Quagmire

2011-09-17T16:02:00.000-04:00

Guest perspective by Ralph Nader

It was the most extraordinary citizen organizing feat inrecent White House history. Over 1200 Americans from 50 states came toWashington and were arrested in front of the White House to demonstrate theiropposition to a forthcoming Obama approval of the Keystone XL dirty oilpipeline from Alberta, Canada down to the Gulf Coast.

Anyone who has tried to mobilize people in opennon-violent civil disobedience knows how hard it is to have that many peoplepay their way to Washington to join a select group of civic champions. Thefirst round of arrestees – about 100 of them – were brought to a jail and kepton cement floors for 52 hours – presumably, said one guard, on orders fromabove to discourage those who were slated to follow this first wave in the twoweeks ending September 3, 2011.

The Keystone XL pipeline project – owned by a consortiumof oil companies — is a many faceted abomination. It will, if constructed, takeits raw, tar sands carbon down through the agricultural heartland of the UnitedStates — through the Missouri and Niobrara Rivers, the great Ogallala aquifer,fragile natural habitats and Native American lands. Major breaks and accidentson pipelines — four of them with loss of human life— have occurred just in thepast year from California to Pennsylvania, including a recent, majorExxon/Mobile pipeline rupture which resulted in many gallons of oil spillinginto the Yellowstone River.

The Office of Pipeline Safety in the Department ofTransportation has been a pitiful rubberstamp patsy for the pipeline industryfor 40 years. There are larger objections – a huge contribution to greenhousegases and further expansion of the destruction of northern Albertan terrain,forests and water - expected to cover an area the size of Florida.

Furthermore, as the Energy Department report on KeystoneXL pointed out, decreasing demand for petroleum through advances in fuelefficiency is the major way to reduce reliance on imported oil with or withoutthe pipeline. There is no assurance whatsoever that the refined tar sands oilin Gulf Coast refineries will even get to the motorists here. They can beexported more profitably to Europe and South America.

In ads on Washington, D.C.’s WTOP news station, theindustry is claiming that the project will create more than 100,000 jobs. Theycannot substantiate this figure. It is vastly exaggerated. TransCanada’s permitapplication for Keystone XL to the U.S. State Department estimated a “peakworkforce of approximately 3,500 to 4,200 construction personnel" to buildthe pipeline.

The Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) and the TransportWorkers Union (TWU) oppose the pipeline. In their August 2011 statement theysaid: “We need jobs, but not ones based on increasing our reliance on Tar Sandsoil […] Many jobs could be created in energy conservation, upgrading the grid,maintaining and expanding public transportation — jobs that can help us reduceair pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and improve energy efficiency.”

The demonstrators before the White House, led byprominent environmentalist Bill McKibben and other stalwarts, focused onPresident Obama because he and he alone will make the decision either for oragainst building what they call "North America's biggest carbonbomb." He does not have to ask Congress.

Already the State Department, in their latest report, ismoving to recommend approval. The demonstrators and their supporters, includingleaders of the Native American Dene tribe in Canada and the Lakota nation inthe U.S., filled much of the area in front of the White House and LafayetteSquare. On September 2, I went down to express my support for their cause.Assistants to Mr. McKibben asked me to speak at the final rally at the squareon Saturday. I agreed. At 6:25 p.m. we received an e-mail from Daniel Kesslerwithdrawing their invitation because of “how packed our schedule already is.We’d love to have Ralph there in any other capacity, including participating inthe protest.”

The next day, many of the speakers went way over theirallotted five to six minute time slots. Observers told me that there were to beno criticisms of Barack Obama. McKibben wore an Obama pin on the stage. Obamat-shirts were seen out in the crowd. McKibben did not want their efforts to be"marginalized" by criticizing the President, which they expected Iwould do. He said that “he would not do Obama the favor” of criticizing him.

To each one's own strategy. I do not believe McKibben'sstrategy is up to the brilliance of his tactics involving the mass arrests.(Which by the way received deplorably little mass media coverage).

Obama believes that those demonstrators and theirfollowers around the country are his voters (they were in 2008) and that theyhave nowhere to go in 2012. So long as environmentalists do not find a way todisabuse him of this impression long before Election Day, they should get readyfor an Obama approval of the Keystone XL monstrosity.

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I'll be on 1510 AM in Boston Saturday a.m.

2011-09-09T21:34:00.002-04:00

Sorry for the short notice but I'll be on the radio in Boston and over the Web from 10 to 11 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 10, tomorrow. I'll be subbing for Samantha Clemens who is on holiday overseas. In metropolitan Boston, the station can be heard on 1510 AM. Online, it's revolutionboston.com.

I'll be joined by Aaron Donchin and we'll be talking about the Sept. 11 anniversary, the New Hampshire primary and presidential politics, and legal issues and the death penalty.

Our guests include Marc Forter, a regional editor at Patch.com in New Hampshire, based out of in Portsmouth.

We'll also be talking with Attorney David Barron, Asst. Public Advocate, Dept. of Public Advocacy, Capitol Post Convention Unit, in Frankfort, Ken.

Nader writes Labor Day letter to Obama

2011-09-04T10:21:00.001-04:00

In the Public Interest: Obama’s Laborious Labor Day

By Ralph Nader

September 2, 2011

Dear President Obama:

Happy Labor Day! This is your third opportunity asPresident to go beyond your past tepid Labor Day proclamations.

You could convey to 150 million workers that you’re goingto start doing something about your 2008 campaign promises to labor. Recallthat you clearly promised to press for a $9.50 federal minimum wage by 2011.Arguing that having millions of Walmart type workers make the leap from thepresent $7.25 per hour will pump nearly $200 billion in consumer demand for ourrecessionary economy.

You can add that a $9.50 minimum is still less than whatworkers made under the minimum wage in 1968, adjusted for inflation, whenworker productivity was half of what it is today. Besides, businesses likeWalmart have received windfalls year after year due to the minimum wage laggingbehind inflation for decades.

Your second promise in 2008 was pushing for card-checklegislation—a top priority for the AFL-CIO whose member unions helped electyou. “Give me the cardcheck,” Rich Trumka, now AFL-CIO president, told me in2004, “and millions of workers will organize into unions.”

I may have missed something but when was the last timeyou championed card check after you took your oath of office? Did you bring labortogether, the way you brought big business together for their demands, andlaunch a public drive to overcome many of the obstructions workers now have toconfront under the present corporate driven union-busting climate?

I met with Mr. Trumka recently. It seemed he’s given upon you for the card check or minimum wage. With such low expectations, youprobably can make organized labor a little more enthusiastic for you if yousimply mentioned these two measures in your next State of the Union address. Youcould even break an old taboo and say that the notoriously anti-workerTaft-Hartley Act of 1947 needs to be changed. Just talking about those issueswill “keep hope alive,” for “change you can believe in.”

Even better, mention these with a paragraph on thespreading poverty—yes, finally use that word “poverty” which is decidedly not“middle-class.” Last January, your State of the Union address ignoredpoverty—accelerating child poverty, hunger, homelessness, mass unemployment andunderemployment do add up to that phenomenon. If not deeds or action, at leastjust give them some words.

As big business abandons American workers and takes jobsand industries to communist and fascist regimes abroad—regimes that know how tokeep workers in their place at 50 or 80 cents an hour—reactionary Republicangovernors are stripping public employees of their collective bargaining rights.These Republicans are laying off their teachers and other workers so they donot have to repeal the corporate welfare drains on their state treasuries.Dozens of corporate welfare tax abatements, subsidies, giveaways, bailouts andother freebies are embedded in their state laws.

When the Wisconsin workers protested and filled thesquare in Madison, Wisconsin, they were expressing your “fierce urgency ofnow.” But you would not go and address just one of their rallies to supporttheir jobs and rights.

Just before the last big rally of some 100,000 peoplefrom all over Wisconsin, the state federation of labor invited the VicePresident to speak to them in Madison. The White House said no. Isn’t Joe Bidenknown for saying “I’m a union guy?”

Can you imagine a national Republican presidentialcandidate refusing an invitation to speak to 100,000 Tea Partiers bycomparison?

But then these Democratic workers, you may believe, havenowhere to go in November 2012. That’s right, they don’t have to go anywhere;they can stay right at home along with their volunteer hours andGet-Out-The-Vote calls. Political withdrawal is real easy to do. Remember 2010.Remember the sharp drop in the youth vote. You may be met with less enthusiasmthan Congressional Democrats encountered in 2010.

Sincerely,

Ralph Nader

New Blogspot interface

2011-09-01T08:12:00.000-04:00

I haven't been doing a lot of blogging. Been too busy with other things. However, I must admit that I'm liking this new Blogger interface change they've put into the CMS. I saw the link this morning and clicked on it thinking, What's that?
The new interface is less busy, with more white space, and seems to offer a lot more bells and whistles. It also offers the badly needed Insert Jump Break (a nice feature in the previous corporate Wordpress accounts I used to work with) that keeps the long opuses from filling up the entire page.
I'll noodle with it a bit more another time and report back anything else that is interesting about it. But out of the box, I'm liking it.

Ralph Nader: 10 painful lessons of 9/11

2011-09-01T07:45:00.001-04:00

Note: This was published in the USA Today and sent out by Nader to other publications.

The commemorative ceremonies that are planned for the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 massacre are those of pathos for the victims and their families, of praise for both the pursuit of the supporters of the attackers and the performance of first responders and our soldiers abroad.

Flags and martial music will punctuate the combined atmosphere of sorrow and aggressive defiance to those terrorists who would threaten us. These events will be moments of respectful silence and some expressions of rage and ferocity.

But many Americans might also want to pause to recognize — or unlearn — those reactions and overreactions to 9/11 that have harmed our country. How, in this forward-looking manner, can we respect the day of 9/11?

Here are some suggestions:

1. Do not exaggerate our adversaries' strength in order to produce a climate of hysteria that results in repression of civil liberties, embodied in the overwrought USA Patriot Act, and immense long-term damage to our economy. Consider the massive diversion of trillions of dollars from domestic civilian needs because of the huge expansion and misspending in military and security budgets.

2. Do not allow our leaders to lie and exaggerate as when they told us there were funded, suicidal and hateful al-Qaeda cells all over our country. They were never here. Actually, the wholesale invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan became recruiting grounds for more al-Qaeda branches there and in other countries — a fact acknowledged by both then-Army Chief of Staff George Casey and then-CIA Director Porter Goss.

3. Do not create a climate of fear or monopolize a partisan definition of patriotism in order to silence dissent from other political parties, the citizenry or the unfairly arrested or harassed.

4. Do not tolerate presidents who violate our Constitution and start wars without congressional deliberation and a declaration of war (article 1, section 8, clause 11). Do not let them disobey federal statutes and international treaties in pursuing unlawful, misdirected quicksand wars, as in Iraq, that produce deaths, destruction and debts that undermine our country's national interests.

5. Do not have Congress write a blank check, outside the normal Appropriations Committee hearing process, for the huge budgetary demands from the executive branch for funding of the Iraq, Afghan-Pakistan and other undeclared wars.

6. Do not allow the executive branch to engage in unconstitutional and illegal recurrent practices such as wiretapping and other methods of surveillance of Americans without judicial approval, in addition to arrests without charges, indefinite imprisonment, torture and denial of habeas corpus and other due process rights established by our Founding Fathers. Congress has passed no reforms to check the continuing exercise of unchecked dictatorial presidential power.

7. Do not let the government hide the horrors of war from the people by prohibiting photographs of U.S. casualties; operating cruel, secret prisons; harassing reporters; and refusing to count civilian casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. There is too much intimidation of returning soldiers — so many harmed for life — from telling the people what they experienced and think about these wars and their heavy outsourcing to profiteering corporations.

8. Do not allow leaders to violate American principles with torture or other war crimes prohibited by the Geneva Conventions. Nor should top military brass or members of the executive branch be above our laws and escape accountability.

9. Do not allow your Congress to abdicate or transfer its own constitutional authorities to the president. We the people have not exercised our civic duties enough to make our representatives in Congress fulfill their obligations under the Constitution to decide whether we go to war and act as a watchdog of the president's conduct. The Libyan war was decided and funded by President Obama without congressional approval.

10. Call out those in the news media who become a mouthpiece of the president and his departments involved in these hostilities. What more is the military really doing in Libya, Somali and Yemen as compared with the official line? Under what legal authority?

In addition, demand that news media outlets seek the inconvenient facts, wherever they might lead, unlike the pre-Iraq invasion period.

The celebrated American theologian-philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr aptly wrote decades ago that "to the end of history, social orders will probably destroy themselves in the effort to prove that they are indestructible."

All empires eventually eat away at their own and devour themselves.
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Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer and author of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us. He is encouraging people around the country to gather in their own towns or cities on Sept. 10 to discuss ways to avoid overreactions to threats.

Sun and Sanity

2011-08-27T20:50:00.000-04:00

In The Public Interest By Ralph Nader

This is the second week of protests, led by Bill McKibben, in front of the White House demanding that President Barack Obama reject a proposed 1700 mile pipeline transporting the dirtiest oil from Alberta, Canada through fragile ecologies down to the Gulf Coast refineries. One thousand people will be arrested there from all fifty states before their demonstration is over. The vast majority voted for Obama and they are plenty angry with his brittleness on environmental issues in general.


Following the large BP discharge in the Gulf of Mexico, Obama gave the OK to expand drilling over 20 million acres in the Gulf and soon probably in the Arctic Ocean. He delayed clean air rules over at EPA. Following the worsening Fukishima nuclear disaster last March in Japan, he reaffirmed his support for more taxpayer guaranteed nuclear plants in the U.S. adding his Administration’s hopes to learn from the mistakes there.

He proposed an average fuel efficiency standard for 2005 at 62 miles per gallon, quickly conceded to industry’s objection and brought it down to 54 mpg. The industry’s trade journal Automotive News calculated the loopholes and brought it down to “real-world industry wide fleet average in the 2025 model year” of about 40 mpg. No wonder the auto companies effusively praised Obama’s give-it-up negotiator, Ron Bloom at the Treasury Department of all places.

Were Obama to look out his White House window and see the arrested and handcuffed demonstrators against this $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline, he might think: “This will upset my environmental supporters, but heck, where can they go in November 2012?”

He is right. No matter what Mr. Obama does to surrender environmental health and safety to corporatist demands, they will vote for him. They certainly won’t vote for the Republican corporate mascots. They wouldn’t vote for a Green Party candidate either. This is not only the environmentalists’ dilemma, it is the liberal/progressive/labor union dilemma as well. They have no bargaining power with Obama.

He did not propose a carbon tax when the Democrats controlled Congress in 2009-2010. Even Exxon prefers a carbon tax to the corruption-inducing complex cap and trade bill the House passed only to have the Senate sit on it. So doing nothing on climate change is soon to be followed by approval of the destructive tar sands pipeline which will add significantly to greenhouse gases.

Pipelines have been busting out recently in California, near Yellowstone and in Pennsylvania. People died and water was polluted. Pipeland standards are old, weak and hardly enforced by the tiny pipeline safety office at the Department of Transportation. Obama hasn’t been pushing for needed money and stronger standards with tougher enforcement.

Over-riding, in Obama’s mind, is being accused of blocking job formation. But had he pushed for a major public-works program in 2009, as many economists still beg him to do, he wouldn’t be in the position of being called a job-destroyer. He also is sensitive to rebuttable charges that he would be preferring future oil from unfriendly countries abroad to Canadian oil.

You can see the corner he is in because he didn’t come out strongly for major solar, wind power, energy conservation and immediate retrofit programs in 2009. Instead he swallowed the oil industry line that his proposed energy policy should be a mix of fossil fuels, nuclear power, solar and conservation in that order. No, Mr. Obama, some energy sources are too superior in too many ways to be a part of this manipulative greenwashing propaganda displayed in oil company newspaper ads.

Even nature contradicts Mr. Obama. Obama’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recently gave a pass to the Indian Point Unit 2 Reactor, a menacingly-troubled reactor 30 miles north of Manhattan, after its inspectors discovered a refueling-cavity liner had been leaking for years at rates up to 10 gallons per minute. Just last week the strongest earthquake in 140 years struck the east coast. Even though the liner’s “sole safety function is the prevention of leakage after a seismic event,” according to David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists, the NRC did not require the plant’s owner to repair the design defect.

This is only one of many defects, inspection lapses, close calls, corrosions, and ageing problems with many U.S. nuclear plants that Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu and President Obama have not seriously addressed. This is the case even though the news from Fukishima becomes worse every week. More food is found contaminated. Radiation readings at the site reached their highest level in August. Now the Japanese government is about to declare a wide area around the nine destroyed or disabled nuclear plants uninhabitable for decades to come due to radiation.

Nearly fifty years ago, the industry regulator and vigorous promoter, the Atomic Energy Commissions estimated that a class nine nuclear meltdown in the U.S. would contaminate “an area the size of Pennsylvania.” That was before we had dozens of even larger ageing nuclear plants whose owners are brazenly pressing for license extensions beyond the normal life expectancy of many over-the-hill nuke plants. Please face up to it Mr. President.

At moments of reflection, those 1000 citizens standing tall before the White House must look up at the sun and all the forms of available renewable energy it gave this planet zillions of years ago and wonder how nuts our life-sustaining star must think Earthlings have been all these years.

Dark Horizon at Verizon

2011-08-27T08:11:00.001-04:00

Guest perspective by Ralph Nader
It was only a matter of time before the "pull down" NAFTA and WTO trade agreements on U.S. wages and jobs would be followed by "pull down" contract demands by U.S. corporations on their unionized workers toward levels of non-unionized laborers.

The most recent illustration of this three-decade reversal of nearly a century of American economic advances for employees is the numerous demands by Verizon

Here are just a few of the concessions the new Verizon CEO, Lowell McAdam, is insisting upon:

--More power to contract out and offshore jobs to add to the 25,000 already in that category; thereby undermining job security.
--a freeze on pensions;
--elimination of the sickness and death benefit program; --reduction in sick days; and --a major increase in employee contributions to and deductibles under their health insurance coverage.

Mr. Lowell McAdam would surely have trouble feeling the pain of his workers who brave the elements storm or shine to afford him a salary of over 1.5 million dollars PER MONTH plus perks and benefits.

Watching Verizon profits soar year after year, noticing Verizon stock rise faster than its competitors, knowing that the company's top five executives took in over $250 million between them in the last four years, the Communications Workers of America (CWA) took their members on strike on August 7, 2011. "Unfair and unacceptable" was their cry on the picket lines up and down the east coast.

These workers pay their taxes. While the tax lawyers for their bosses have figured out how to turn Verizon into a vast tax escapee. According to the super-accurate Citizens for Tax Justice, Verizon Communications made a total of $32.5 billion dollars in pretax U.S. profits during 2008, 2009, 2010. Far from paying the maximum federal corporate income tax rate of 35 percent on these ample profits, Verizon's federal income tax was negative $951 million or negative 2.9 percent!

Some of these saved tax revenues have been getting into expensive daily full page advertisements (not deductible it is hoped) in the Washington Post, The New York Times, and other large newspapers. Verizon's brazen assertions reflect the limitless arrogance of a multinational behemoth.

Verizon's headlines its ad with these words: "They claim we're asking union-represented employees to contribute to their own health care premiums. THEY'RE RIGHT. Verizon is proposing that its union-represented employees contribute more toward the cost of rising health care. 135,000 non-union Verizon employees already pay a portion of the healthcare premium. We're just asking our union -represented employees to chip in like everybody else. We think that's fair."

There you have it - the "pull down" ultimatum to the level of the voiceless majority of Verizon workers. Of course Verizon bosses with their fat paychecks do not have to worry at all about co-payments and larger deductibles in their gold-plated health plan.

Another anti-union Verizon ad featured this assertion: "They claim we want to strip away 50 years of contract negotiations. THEY'RE RIGHT. The union contracts that have expired were drafted over 50 years ago, when people still used rotary phones. Verizon is proposing to update the contracts in a reasonable manner to reflect the changing times."

The CWA leaders recognize that some changes need to be made and have offered compromises. But fifty years ago, a telephone company CEO never dared pay himself anywhere near the multiple that today's Verizon executives get compared to the average workers. Maybe then the CEO would get 20 times the entry level wage. Now it is between two hundred to four hundred times.

Verizon does have one last argument. At the bottom of each full-page ad, it describes exacting concessions from its workers as "all in an effort to best position Verizon to serve our customers." Are those the same customers who are subject to all kinds of extremely one-sided fine print that spells suppression of rights, overcharges, termination fees, penalties and other straitjackets of contract serfdom? Are those the same customers who have to wait and wait to get their service and billing complaints addressed and questions answered? Are those the same customers who can never get Verizon to put what its spokespersons say on the phone in writing?

The CWA workers went back to their jobs on August 22, 2011. Verizon had threatened to cut off their medical, dental and optical benefits by August 31.Their 2008 contract continues until ongoing negotiations with the company are concluded for a new contract.

Verizon keeps saying that what they're doing just "reflects the changing times." The times are changing - skyrocketing executive pay packages and corporate profits - slashing benefits for the workers and their families - shredding of all moral authority by example from the top.

If negotiations break down in the coming weeks and the CWA goes out on strike again, consumer advocates and their organizations should make it explicitly clear that Verizon can't excuse what they're doing to workers in order to better "serve our customers."

Verizon is going increasingly wireless. They are also going increasingly shameless!

Wakefield's 200th ...

2011-08-27T08:10:00.002-04:00

OK Sox, we're getting down to the wire toward the end of the season. I know winning is everything, but so are personal goals. Kick it into gear and help Wakefield get his 200th win already. Stop messing around!

Retreat, Surrender, Can He At Least Plead?

2011-08-02T23:04:00.000-04:00

Guest perspective by Ralph Nader
The headlines came quickly after President Obama concluded the deficit-debt deal with the Republicans Sunday evening. There were few shades of gray. The New York Times editorial was titled "To Escape Chaos, a Terrible Deal: Democrats won almost nothing they wanted except avoiding default."
It was truly, as the Times pointed out, "a political environment laced with lunacy." But don't blame it all on the Republican "mad dogs" on Capitol Hill playing chicken with the economic plight of the American people and its wobbling economy. It was President Obama who surrendered.
In one of the most inept episodes of Presidential-Congressional relations, Mr. Obama managed to give the Republicans more than they expected and leave the Democrats with less than the Republicans offered. The Republicans never expected Mr. Obama to give in entirely on tax increases on the wealthy, on the reviled oil industry giants and other corporate tax escapees. The Republicans even agreed to $800 billion in new revenue over ten years. Obama fumbled the ball day after day, and with the August 2 debt ceiling deadline looming, he fell to the extortionists. Unlike Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush II, who routinely expected and got debt ceilings raised without conditions.
President Obama’s disaster began months ago when he agreed to tie raising the debt ceiling to a grand bargain with the Republicans regarding deficits and revenues instead of demanding a debt ceiling raise while he was caving on extending Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. That immediately gave the "fanatic" Republicans a veto power over the "establishment" Republicans in Congress. And fanatics don't blink. Especially those fanatics who, elected last year, say they don't care about being re-elected.
So Obama accepted about $2.5 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade, got no revenue producing tax increases and therefore made it nearly impossible to create a public works jobs program to uplift a sliding economy.
With economic indicators registering more trouble in recent days for American workers, Mr. Obama has no cards left. Interest rates cannot be driven any lower by the Federal Reserve. He didn't get even a renewal of the extension of unemployment benefits. Consumer spending – 2/3rds of the economy, is stagnant. Without consumer demand, new investment is sluggish. Unemployment is rising, and without jobs, workers can't increase their consumer spending. State, local and federal government spending cannot increase under the yoke of the just agreed-upon cuts. The weaker dollar may increase exports a little, but the U.S. still has a continuing massive trade deficit, especially with China. Europe's financial problems will curb orders of U.S. goods and services.
So what can Mr. Obama do? He can propose a public works program, paid for by the tax increases on the wealthy and the corporations. Both are getting richer. The large corporations are reporting very good second quarter profits further disconnecting their affluence from that of their workers and labor in general. He could, if he wanted, make a very strong case for repairing America's infrastructure and bring the soldiers back from Iraq and Afghanistan, as a majority of the American people and the most mayors of our cities desire.
First, however, he has to take the offensive by showing that the bulk of the deficits since 2002 were caused by the Bush tax cuts, mostly for the wealthy, and Bush's two wars. Obama also has to hold the Republicans accountable for their hostage-taking of the American economy so they cannot impede public works proposals in an election year.
Amazingly, as a Harvard-trained lawyer, he was quick to compromise from the get-go. Consequently, he painted himself into a corner. So, since he is not a leader, maybe he can become a pleader.
Given that non-financial companies are sitting on two trillion dollars of inert cash and other liquid assets, maybe he can appeal to these companies to disgorge ten percent in immediate special dividends to their long-parched shareholders who are, after all, their owners. Loosening the executive locks on this hoard of money would provide $200 billion for more likely spending in the market place. Companies like Apple, Google, Cisco, Intel and Microsoft alone are sitting on well over $200 billion cash. To these coddled, indentured U.S. companies he can invoke President John F. Kennedy's challenge--"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."
Second, he can plead with those very profitable corporations that have benefited from the government bailout, or pay little or no federal income taxes, to voluntarily contribute to a public works fund.
Companies like GE, Verizon, Exxon Mobil, Boeing, IBM, Wells Fargo, DuPont, American Electric Power, FedEx, Honeywell, Yahoo, United Technologies as a group made $171 billion in U.S. profits over three years and paid zero federal income tax with a $2.5 billion negative advantage. And that, says Bob McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice, is "just the tip of an iceberg of widespread corporate tax avoidance."
Is such pleading just Pollyannaish? Maybe. But it will resonate with the American people’s sense of injustice. Those feelings of indignation can reverberate and cause members of Congress to start remembering who sent them to Washington. Last I heard, corporations don't have a single vote.

Corporate Tax Escapees and You

2011-07-20T23:11:00.000-04:00

Guest perspective by Ralph Nader
The all-consuming Washington, D.C. wrangling over debts and deficits, spending and taxing is excluding a large reality of how these financial problems can sensibly and fairly be addressed. These blinders in Congress and the White House come from fact-starved ideologies--mostly from the Republicans--and fear-fed meekness--mostly from the Democrats. Both are furiously dialing for commercial campaign cash.

Take the gigantic world of corporate tax avoidance. Ronald Reagan signed the Tax Reform Act of 1986 that was designed to increase corporate tax revenues by over 30 percent. Today, President Obama wants to diminish or delete some tax loopholes (technically called tax expenditures) for large corporations, but let most of the revenues be cancelled out by lowering the corporate tax rates. How the world changes.

Obama's mild approach is unacceptable to the big business lobbies and their Republican mascots in Congress. They want more tax breaks so they can keep trillions of more dollars over the next decade.

Lost in this whirl of vast greed and political calculation are options, which if pursued with a sense of fairness for the people of the country, would go a long way in providing revenues for public works jobs--repairing America--which in turn would generate more consumer demand by these workers.

The ultra-accurate Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) publishes precise reports on the effective taxes paid by corporations that make an utter mockery of the 35 percent statutory tax rate for corporations (see CTJ.org).

On June 1, 2011, CTJ released a preview of its forthcoming study of Fortune 500 companies and "the taxes they paid--or failed to pay--over the 2008-2010 period." Judging by the preview, this report should silence those who say that the U.S. taxes corporations more than other industrialized nations.

What do you think the following profitable corporations paid in actual total federal income taxes in that period: American Electric Power, Boeing, Dupont, Exxon Mobil, FedEx, General Electric, Honeywell, International, IBM, United Technologies, Verizon Communications, Wells Fargo, and Yahoo? Nothing!

CTJ reports that "from 2008 through 2010, these 12 companies reported $171 billion in pretax U.S. profits. But as a group, their federal income taxes were negative: $2.5 billion."

CTJ documents that "not a single one of the companies paid anything close to the 35 percent statutory tax rate. In fact, the 'highest tax' company on our list, ExxonMobil, paid an effective three-year tax rate of only 14.2 percent…and over the past two years, Exxon Mobil's net tax on its $9.9 billion in U.S. pretax profits was a minuscule $39 million, an effective tax rate of 0.4 percent."

Next time you hear Republicans like Eric Cantor, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell repeat their statement that corporations are overtaxed and need a break, you can tell them that "had these 12 companies paid the full 35 percent corporate tax, their federal income taxes over the three years would have totaled $59.9 billion." CTJ director, Bob McIntyre noted that these 12 companies are "just the tip of an iceberg of widespread corporate tax avoidance."

Of course, most Americans suspect as much, even if they don't have the exact figures. A recent Gallup poll asked the public's opinion on where they stand on the tax cuts for the rich and the tax breaks for the corporations. By a 45% margin, they opposed tax cuts for the rich and by a 55% margin, they opposed tax cuts for corporations.

So what are Barack Obama and the Democrats waiting for? They have the undeniable facts and overwhelming public sentiment behind them. Why do they let Cantor, Boehner and McConnell continue to mouth falsehoods without rebuttals of the truth?

It's obvious. The Democrats want big time money from the executives and Political Action Committees of the Fortune 500. The Democrats are willing to let the Republicans fuzz the debate and dare to try and make Medicare and social security benefits absorb the sacrifices. Indeed last week, the Washington Post headlined Obama signaling to the Republicans that social security "is on the table."

Even the meek reporters should no longer fail to challenge the Republican's daily mantras.

Should you have any doubts that the corporate state is in firm control of your government, try this test: If you paid a single dollar in federal income tax in any of the years 2008, 2009 and 2010, you paid more than the giant General Electric (GE) company. In that period GE made $7.722 billion in U.S. profit, paid no taxes and received $4.737 billion from the IRS. As the New York Times reported on March 24, teams of GE tax lawyers and accountants are making sure they avoid taxes altogether, shifting the burden to you.

These big companies are laughing at us all the way to the taxpayer-bailed-out banks. They're even laughing at their own shareholder-owners. The non-financial companies are sitting on about $2 trillion. Inert dollars, producing nothing and earning minuscule interest are better deployed by enlarging the dividend payments to their shareholders. A mere 10% of that sum as dividend payments this year would pump $200 billion into an economy needing more consumer demand.

Reporters and columnists need to start addressing these topics at news conferences with members of Congress and White House staffers. The Washington press corps shouldn't behave like sheep!

August 2011 Top 30 Noise chart

2011-07-20T08:09:00.001-04:00

Reporting: 14 different radio stations and Internet programs

1. Freezepop – Imaginary Friends
2. Gene Dante & the Future Starlets “The Love Letter Is Dead”
3. Girlfriends – “Cave Kids”
4. The Fatal Flaw – Narrow Hours
5. Lindsay Starr & the Chemical Smiles – Fake It EP
6. Buffalo Tom – Skins
7. The Lights Out – Primetime
8. Guillermo Sexo – Vivid Nights
9. Lowfives – “Goldsharks”
10. Deer Tick – The Black Dirt Sessions
11. The Michael J. Epstein Memorial Library – Volume One
12. Hands and Knees – Wholesome
13. Hooray for Earth – True Loves
14. The Sheila Divine – “Carve Away”
15. The Longwalls – Careers in Science EP
16. Corin Ashley & the Chocolate Olivers – The Abbey Road Sessions
17. Old Jack – Gone Before You Know EP
18. Radio Control – Hot Audio
19. Mean Creek – Hemophiliac EP
20. Ad Frank & the Fast Easy Women – “French Translator”
21. The Diamond Mines – The Diamond Mines
22. The Macrotones – First Signs of Danger
23. Hallelujah the Hills – “Country Before Kings”
24. Soft Pyramids – Electric Scenes EP
25. John Powhida International Airport – Dirty Birdy and Funny Bunny
26. Gentlemen Hall – Give Us Roots, Give Us Wings EP
27. Jade Sylvan – Blood & Sand
28. Sleepy Very Sleepy – Unlimited Circulation
29. This Blue Heaven – Spinning & Shining EP
30. The Luxury – This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

"You will always be a Superhero to me, Tony ..."

2011-06-18T23:18:00.004-04:00

Sometimes, you really don't know the role you play in other people's lives ... really ... I took some time to write and think about this post before actually letting anyone else read some of my thoughts. It hasn't been the easiest thing to write but here it goes ...
Recently, I left a job I loved to try something new and different in the same field. For slightly more than four years, I was the editor of the Belmont Citizen-Herald in Belmont, Mass. I commuted between New Hampshire and Massachusetts, four to five times a week, working out of the GateHouse Media New England Lexington office. I spent anywhere from two to three hours in the car, spending thousands of dollars on gas, just to get to work. People used to shake their heads at me sometimes when I would talk about my love of journalism and how I didn't care about the commute ("There are 3,500 songs on my iPhone," I would say ...). Crazy, insane, sure, but when you love your job, you love your job (here is a link to my goodbye column, if anyone is interested in reading it: "Schinella: Goodbye to Belmont again").
I've been working in media for a long time. I kinda stumbled into it by accident after working long stints in retail, some political jobs and political efforts (mostly Dems and progressive indies), and both free and paid radio, etc.
I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I had experimented with all kinds of jobs and interests. I had done everything I ever wanted to do and journalism was one of those things on the list of things I wanted to do.
Before going back to the Citizen-Herald in 2007, I worked at WKXL radio in Concord. Before that, I was the editor of The Winchester Star, in Winchester, Mass., and was the reporter at the Citizen-Herald. I had spent 13 years doing radio at WMFO, the Tufts community FM station, and WUNR, a foreign language radio station. I hosted talk shows on both stations and also played various kinds of music. I also published my own nationally distributed music fanzine off and on for six years. I was in and out of various music groups, put out my own records and CDs, and played on a ton of other musicians' projects. And before and during all of that, I would write columns and letters wondering if anyone was really reading anything or thinking about new and different ways of doing things.
I had always loved journalism as a reader; so I was overwhelmed by it when I started doing it for work.
That is one of the reasons why I'm so excited that I have this new opportunity with AOL's Concord NH Patch site (concord-nh.patch.com).
One of the reasons I love working in journalism is the reaction people have about what you do. For the most part, it has been positive for me. Even the "negative" stories get a positive reaction because you're exposing corruption, fraud, or whatever. That's part of the job.
Another example is this: The reaction from literally hundreds of people after announcing my departure from the Citizen-Herald in May. Like I said at the beginning of this post, you really don't know what role you play in people's lives ... until you leave. Seriously, hundreds of emails, phone calls, notes online, and personal well wishes. It was shocking, actually, and, for a few fleeting moments I wondered, "What the hell am I doing?"
Some were so surprised I was leaving, literally screaming "Noooo!!!" or "What?!" in their email messages ... Most were pretty standard "Good luck" ... "You've done a great job" ... "You'll be missed" ... "It's such a loss" ... etc., as well as a ton of thank yous ... all heartfelt and touching notes that really moved me to no end.
Most of the nasty people, thankfully, stayed silent, which was nice. I personally liked a lot of them and found them to be colorful, thoughtful, and even brilliant people, if they weren't such nasty human beings (aren't a lot of people nasty human beings these days? So sad!). Most, generalizing, had two basic problems: A complete lack of understanding about what it means to be a journalist or were simply being spoiled brats.
There is nothing you can do about the latter. I was surprised though about how little empathy some readers - many of my generation, many with supposedly "liberal" or "progressive" values or thoughts - looked at things and acted upon them. "Me, me, me, mine, mine, mine," all the time, without any forethought of how their demands harmed other people, often in the name of children.
The former was pretty shocking, especially for an over-stimulated - and, in many cases, over-educated - class of people, who have become so polarized by their own personal beliefs of what the facts are that, in many cases, they have no idea what the facts truly are (these are the nasty, crazy people I am speaking of, not everyone in Belmont). Some had deep mental health or emotional issues - which was depressing and sad. Many others were users or "fair weather friends," if you will, who would quickly turn on a dime on anything (you get used to that in this business though ...).
I could write a book about the town ... and maybe I will someday. I don't know.
But overall, what a positive, nurturing experience it was covering Belmont. And you can see that in all of the goodbye comments and notes people sent. I mean, wow ... here are a few that really hit me the hardest.
First, this one woman, a very good source and a great community asset, wrote:

"I haven't written because I've been so distraught that you are leaving. Good for you.. bad for us. You really have been a joy - your savvy, your irreverence, your sense of humor and your intelligence. Award winning doesn't begin to cover it. You are fearless. You will always be a Superhero to me, Tony, with the cape and tights. Thank you."

I started crying when I got that one. Who is this person you speak of, I thought? That's not me, is it?!? Yeah, sometimes, I would joke that I'm "Super Tony, I can do anything!" But it's just a joke, it's not, well, real ... Later, I ran into this person and together, we could barely contain the tears ... part sadness, part joy, all humanity ...
Here's another from Ruth Foster, this amazing 80-plus-year-old woman in
Belmont who wrote the newspaper's great gardening column. She ended her June 2, column by writing:

"I cannot end without a sad goodbye to my Belmont Citizen-Herald Editor, Tony Schinella. It has been a pleasure to have been a columnist for him. Over the years, I have had many editors, starting 35 years ago at the Christian Science Monitor, then the Boston Globe, and many magazines. Only a very few editors are real newspaper people. These professionals can make a story come alive. They intimately know the politics, the groups, their agendas, and the people of the town they cover. Tony is one (of) these very few. He is a true, talented and analytical professional. Belmont will greatly miss his historical knowledge and journalistic insight."

Wow. This, from a former Globe scribe, some of the nastiest human beings in the business who treated me like dirt when I was politically involved in Boston during the 1980s and 1990s. Amazing.
One of our other columnists, Tony Oberdorfer, also wrote kind things and thanked me for not ceding to pressure from some of the liberals in town to ban his column. As I always said to him and others, "I'm not in the censorship business, I'm in the freedom business."
Good journalism is about freedom, and not in the political sense but in the personal liberty sense. Everyone should learn to embrace what others feel and think so that you can learn more about the people around you. You also learn more about yourself. And the more information you take in, the more educated your own decisions and opinions are. And yes, everyone should listen to everyone else too! But we don't censor people; we don't tell them to shut up and go away; we don't tell them to move if they can't afford whatever thing you want. That defeats the entire purpose of being in the communication and information business.
For all the talk about our business "dying" one has to wonder. Not only with the new gig but the response from the old gig, people really do care about what they absorb and what they read. They want to know what is going on around them. And we - both journalists and the corporations that we work for - have a responsibility to deliver it to them in a healthy, responsible, and meaningful way. We shouldn't be cheating them or punishing them with financial tricks or some of the crap we have seen on Wall Street or in board rooms in the past decade or so. This is journalism, it's information, it's important, more important than spreadsheets, percentages, etc.
So your supposedly superhero writer moves onto a new gig with AOL's Patch. I'm very excited about it. I encourage you to join me in following the site, checking out all the political news we'll be offering there, being a primary state and all. More about that and the future of Politizine.com later.

Waging Another Unconstitutional War

2011-06-18T07:30:00.000-04:00

Guest Perspective By Ralph Nader
The meticulous Harvard Law Review editors should be rolling over in their footnotes. The recidivist violations of constitutional and statutory requirements by their celebrated predecessor at that journal – Barack Obama has reached Orwellian dimensions in the war against Libya.

You see, the widespread daily bombing of Libya, the strict naval blockade of Muammar Gadhafi-controlled Libya, the destruction of Gadhafi's family compound and tent encampment in the desert--killing his son and three grandchildren--and the deployment of special forces inside Libya is not a "War." It is in the Obama White House's evasive nomenclature just a "time-limited, scope-limited military action" Can you find that phrase in the Constitution?

If Obama used the word "War," he would have a more difficult time explaining to Congress and the American people (three out of four oppose this war) why he did not (1) seek a declaration of war under Article I, section 8, clause 11 of the Constitution, or (2) seek Congressional authorization for appropriated funds to further the war with our NATO co-warriors, or (3) comply with the deadlines of the War Powers Resolution. He threw all three lawful restraints on his Presidential unilateralism overboard.

So, in the invidious tradition of George W. Bush and his indentured confessor, Justice Department lawyer, John Yoo, now comfortably ensconced on the law faculty of the University of California Berkeley, Mr. Obama is blithely claiming as authority for taking our country into another war "the inherent powers of the President under Article II of the Constitution." This wouldn't pass the laugh test by Jefferson, Madison, Franklin Mason or even Hamilton. James Madison believed placing the war-declaring power in the exclusive hands of Congress was the most significant achievement during the convention in Philadelphia that summer of 1787. No more King George substitutes for America's future, they demanded.

Note that Libya did not attack the U.S. or its appendages, and did not attack a member of NATO. Obama admits these points. Libya's trusting government sovereign fund even left $37 billion in the U.S. which Obama promptly froze. Lacking even the prevaricatory pretenses for Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, Obama and Hillary Clinton now say the U.S. is militarily involved "to protect our interests and advance our values" in the region and, of course, to protect the "universal rights" of the Libyan people. (Opportunities abound for this Obama doctrine around the world from the Congo to Syria, to Burma, to occupied Palestine and many other areas.)

Desperately seeking legitimacy, Mr. Obama cites the UN resolution, NATO, and the Arab League instead of seeking it from Congress. For all treaties with foreign countries, including the UN Charter, are trumped by the U.S. Constitution (Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1 (1957)). As a former teacher of constitutional law, the President knows this basic principle but then, as Lord Acton declared: "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Congress, rendered a rubber stamp by President George W. Bush, is bestirring itself. On June 3, 2011, the House of Representatives passed H.R. Res 292 declaring that the President shall not deploy, establish, or maintain the presence of units and members of the United States Armed Forces on the ground in Libya. On this matter, Obama pleads state secrets.

On June 16, 2011, ten members of the House – five conservative Republicans (including Walter B. Jones (Rep. N.C.) and Ron Paul (Rep. Texas) and five Democrats (including Dennis Kucinich (Dem. Ohio) and John Conyers (Dem. Mich.) filed suit against President Obama in federal district court for an order declaring the U.S. war in Libya "without a declaration of Congress with the use of funds never approved for such a war" to be unconstitutional. Given past judicial decisions declaring members of Congress to have "no standing to sue" on what they call "political matters," this suit is facing an uphill barrier.

Congress has appropriated no money for this war, already costing nearly a billion dollars, nor has the lawless Obama asked for it because he knows there will be strong bi-partisan resistance.

So where is the Congress to go but to the courts to decide this internal, domestic issue affecting the separation of powers provoked by a clearly lawless President? The degraded, politicized, formerly professional, Office of Legal Counsel is a sleazy apologist for presidential overreaching for over two decades.

The expanding immunities of the Executive branch, now increasingly embracing the military contractors of the corporate state, is destroying the remaining pretensions that we are a nation under law. When he was inaugurated as President in January 2009, President Obama said he wanted his Administration to be known as one of "transparency and the rule of law." You'll recall during his 2008 campaign he trumpeted that he would obey the Constitution, inferring the the Republican regime was trampling the Rule of Law.

Indeed in 2007, then Senator Barack Obama stated that "the president does not have any power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation." Vice President Biden was even more vehement on this issue. And Secretary of Defense Robert Gates originally opposed the attack on Libya before falling in line.

Gadhafi's dictatorship is a brutal one. Civil wars are brutal. People are dying and suffering. The country is being torn apart. Obama and NATO are not adequately testing offers for a truce and supervised elections. Top level officials are defecting from Gadhafi and hoping to help lead any successor government.

Regimes brutalize their people whether as dictatorships, authoritarian rulers, connected with dominant oligarchies, or through racial, religious or other sectarian repressions. Is the U.S., mired in deep recession, debt and its own kleptocracy, going to continue to police the world with bases, interventions, subversions or occupation?

The cause of human rights everywhere, needs a permanent, well-quipped professional United Nations peace-keeping force and effective international courts to prevent mass massacres and mass brutalities. That time is not near but it should be at the top of the agenda of civilized nations.

The U.S., as the number one military superpower, provoking antagonisms by its penchant for control throughout the world, should not imperially advance our empire. It is that belief which is bringing Right and Left together, not just in Congress, but around the country.

(See: ComeHomeAmerica.us, edited by George D. O'Neill, Jr. Paul Buhle; Bill Kauffman and Kevin Zeese, Titan Publishing Company [2010])

Fighting for FOIA

2011-06-14T06:05:00.000-04:00

In the Public Interest By Ralph Nader

The 45th anniversary of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) next month should remind all who have used this wonderful citizen tool against government secrecy and cover-ups of FOIA’s towering champion Congressman John Moss (D-Calif.). Last year alone, using John Moss’s brainchild, there were 597,415 separate FOIA requests filed with federal departments and agencies.

As a legislator, John Moss was a wonder of integrity, diligence, strategic and populist follow-through. Although Moss was not a lawyer, he read more bills cover to cover than most lawyers who were members of Congress.

As a freshmen legislator in Sacramento, he took on the powerful speaker of the state’s House of Representatives for having too much concentrated power. You can count on the fingers of both hands the number of new lawmakers who have done that anywhere in the 50-state legislatures over the past century. It usually means, at the least, the end of the upstart’s political career. Talk about courage.

Moss came to Congress in 1952 and by 1955, his 12 years of relentless drive for the public’s right to know was underway. He had to take on the corporate lobbies and their cushy relationship with the secrecy-loving bureaucrats, including their president Lyndon B. Johnson. Moss successfully built support in Congress and nationwide.

Later in 1974, I worked with Chairman Moss to advance the strengthening amendments that allowed judicial review of agency denials of information requests. Toughening the best freedom of information law in the world prompted each of the states to pass their own state freedom of information laws.

Before Moss and FOIA, the Navy Department refused to divulge to environmentalists the amount of sewage dumped into bays from naval bases. Seems that the Navy brass thought the Russians or Chinese, with such data, could figure out how many sailors were stationed at a particular base.

The Postmaster General kept secret public employee salaries. Americans could not access their FBI files. Meat and poultry inspection reports were often held in closed government files. In the foreign policy/military area, the national security state behaved as if secrecy was their birthright.

Each time you see a great segment on “60 Minutes,” or read exposés in the newspapers and magazines, chances are that they were made possible in part, if not in whole, by reporters using the FOIA. Americans learned about how far up the George W. Bush chain of command the torture policy in Iraq reached from an ACLU request under FOIA.

To be sure, federal agencies are known to delay or redact far more than they should. These agencies take more advantage of the specific exemptions in the FOIA than they should. But compared to the pre-FOIA laws, our ability to find out what the government is or is not doing is almost like night and day.

Our Freedom of Information Clearing House (http://www.citizen.org/litigation/free_info/) has filed dozens of lawsuits against government agencies for unlawful secrecy. We have won most of them and in the process, improved agency procedures. Our cases provided the evidence showing the need for the 1974 amendments to FOIA as well.

Coming from a humble background – his mother died when he was 12 years old - John Moss is an American hero. His 25 years in the House of Representatives was marked by leadership in the areas of consumer protection and a level of Congressional oversight of federal agencies, almost unknown by today’s abdicatory Congress.

His life should be a model for high school and college students. They should want to see how his singular character and personality put reality into the saying – “information is the currency of democracy,” rather than just following the latest peccadilloes of tawdry entertainment and sports celebrities.

Now the young and adults alike have the new book that does Chairman Moss overdue justice. From Michael R. Lemov, chief of the counsel to the Congressman’s two major subcommittees, comes People’s Warrior. This 237-page book covers the personal and professional life of Moss who believed in the political accountability of politicians. More than anyone else in Congress, he gave us a unique law that is invoked only by the desire of people or institutions in the U.S., and sometimes from outside the country. We are the ones who apply this law by using it and improving it.

Of all the legislators I have worked with, John Moss was the most no-nonsense craftsman of them all. Sitting in his office, one did not have to worry about his caving to commercial interests. He took on the auto industry lobbyists in shepherding the Magnuson-Moss Warranty bill through the House (for example, if you bought a lemon car, you can remedy your situation thanks to Moss and his formidable drive for justice.

In so doing, I recommend People’s Warrior especially for young people today, beset with cynicism about Congress or simply “turned off” from politics. The book is an awakening antidote that shows, not so long ago, that there were key members of Congress who made regular, significant decisions on behalf of the people. They were not “cash and carry” politicians as is the norm today at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Contract peonage

2011-06-03T07:34:00.000-04:00

In the Public Interest By Ralph Nader
It is time to shine the light on the big, affluent corporate lawyers who anonymously create those non-competitive fine print contracts we all have to sign to purchase goods and services.

It’s time for an open letter to these Darth Vaders of business law who have destroyed our freedom of contract and built a new road to serfdom made of corporate cement.

Dear Attorneys for Contract Incarceration:

Remember when you were at law school studying contracts? Your professor pressed you socratically to understand Hadley vs. Baxendale et al. You spent just one or two classes on what are called "contracts of adhesion"—those fine print one-sided contracts that only make up 99% of all the contracts we’ll ever sign.

There they are—page after page exuding the silent message of "take it or leave it." If you "leave it", then you must cross the street to a competitor—an insurance company, credit card firm, bank, auto dealer, hospital, realtor, airline, student loan company or cell phone company, awaiting you is the same fine-print contract designed to nail you to the mast. Then there are the shrink-wrap software contracts you can't even see before you buy.

If your contracts professor bothered to explain why so little course time is spent on these standard form contracts involving trillions of dollars in annual sales, he/she might have used the French phrase—"fait accompli." After all, the consumer signed or acquiesced in some way. That met the basic principle of a binding contract, say the courts (with a rare exception now and then) which is a meeting of the minds between the willing seller and the willing buyer.

Discussion over! As a shopper, prepare for the daily coercive harmony.

Imagine all the times you’ve "met the minds" of Bank of America, Metropolitan, Aetna, General Motors, Wal-Mart, American Express, AT&T, Sallie Mae, U.S. Air and your favorite time-sharing company for that vacation trip to Antigua. What a myth!

In this legal fiction land, the law presumes that you’ve read the fine print and understood it. Inscrutability is no defense. It doesn’t matter that law professors, Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts and your partners admit to not reading the dense legalese when they shop. Why waste their time? They can’t get out of contractual prison anymore than you can. But you make zillions figuring out how to lock millions of Americans into one-side anti-consumer contracts.

You misuse your intellect to create a modern contract straitjacket that gets tighter year by year. Your innovations are enforced by status-quo judges, credit ratings, credit scores and the absence of any competition over contracts between companies in the same industry.

The straitjacket is made of figurative steel fibers composed of enforceable words. Here is a partial list of your inventions which Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren aptly calls "mice type" the equivalent of "shrubbery for muggers!"

They include (1) seller's power to unilaterally change terms or assign the contract, (2) waiver provisions of the seller's liability and payment of seller's attorney fees, (3) acceleration and delinquency clauses, (4) binding arbitration and blocking the consumer's resort to the courts and right to jury trials, (5) liquidated damage clauses. On and on go the layers of incarceration.

Pretty clever maybe, but, you aren't being fair to the powerless consumers. Remember, you've got a professional code of ethics that informs you of the obligation sometimes to say no—enough already—to your demanding corporate clients even if they can always go to another law firm that they can pay handsomely to say yes. It can be, for you, a dilemma.

Listen, I've got an exit plan for those of you pondering quitting or retiring because you can no longer stand destroying peoples' freedom of contract—one of the main pillars of our democracy—with their consequential losses of money, time, health and safety.

Come to the other side. A movement for consumer contract justice is heading your way. Don't laugh as General Motors once did in the Nineteen Sixties. Don't think that the complexity of these fine prints cannot be communicated to the buying public. ABC's Peter Jennings showed the opposite with a crisp five part TV series a few years ago. This fall, a sure best seller by David Cay Johnston titled "The Fine Print" is coming out. He has prior best sellers on tax laws that clarify the abstruse to arouse readers.

There is a huge compression of repression and resentment ready to be unleashed and converted into a widely perceived injustice. Ridding themselves of the feeling that "that's the way it is," this consumer uprising will be holding you and your companies responsible by name.

Quit and join the right side of the coming historical change breaking the chains of contract bondage. Bring your knowhow and stored archives (names redacted) of "mice type" to faircontracts.org, directed by the relentless lawyer, Theresa Amato. Soon!

Your brother in law,
Ralph Nader, Esq.

Revitalizing the AFL-CIO

2011-05-29T21:52:00.000-04:00

Ralph Nader/In The Public Interest

When Harry Kelber, the 96 year old relentless labor advocate and editor of The Labor Educator speaks, the leadership of the AFL-CIO should listen. A vigorous champion for the rights of rank-and-file workers vis-à-vis their corporate employers and their labor union leaders, Kelber has recently completed a series of five articles titled “Reasons Why the AFL-CIO Is Broken; Let Us Start a Debate on How to Fix It.” (http://www.laboreducator.org/broken.htm)

The reaction: Silence from union leaders, their union publications and at union gatherings.

Kelber, operating out of a tiny New York City office, knows more firsthand about unions, their historical triumphs, their contemporary deficiencies and their potential for tens of millions of working families than almost anyone in the country. Over the decades, no one has written more widely distributed pamphlets that cogently and concisely explain unions, the labor movement and anti-worker restrictive laws like the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, than this honest, sensitive worker campaigner.

At a perilous period for both working and unemployed Americans, facing deep recession, corporate abandonment to China and other repressive regimes, and the Republicans’ virulent assault on livelihoods and labor rights, Kelber believes that AFL-CIO should be on the ramparts. Instead, he sees it as moribund, hunkering down, with control of the power and purse concentrated in the hands of the silent and Sphinx-like Federation officers and the tiny clique of bureaucrats who run the show.

“In the AFL-CIO, the rank-and-file have no voice in electing their officials, because only the candidates of the Old Guard can be on the ballot,” he writes.

Certainly, the AFL-CIO is not reflecting the old adage that when “the going gets tough, the tough get going.” They recoil from any public criticism of Barack Obama, who disregards or and humiliates them by his actions.

Mr. Obama promised labor in 2008 to press for a $9.50 federal minimum wage by 2011, and the Employee Free Choice Act, especially “card check,” and then forgot about both commitments. He has not spoken out and vigorously fought for an adequate OSHA inspection and enforcement budget to diminish the tens of thousands of workplace related fatalities every year. He’s been too busy managing drones, Kandahar and outlying regions of the quagmire of our undeclared wars.

Nothing Obama does seems to publically rile the AFL-CIO. In February, he crossed Lafayette Square from the White House with great fanfare to visit his pro-Republican opponents at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce yet declined to go around the corner and visit the AFL-CIO headquarters. Where was the public objection from the House of Labor?

He prevents his vice-president from responding to the Wisconsin state federation of Labor’s invitation to address the biggest rally in Madison, Wisconsin protesting labor’s arch enemy, Republican Governor Scott Walker. Biden, a self-styled “union guy”, wanted to go but the political operatives in the White House said NO. Still no public objection from Labor’s leaders.

Kelber describes the lack of a strong, funded national and international strategy to deal with the growing gap between rich and poor and the expanding shipment of both blue and white collar jobs abroad. He laments AFL-CIO’s failure to develop a “working relation with the new global unions that are challenging transnational corporations and winning some agreements.” He also notes that the AFL’s top leaders “have minimal influence at world labor conferences. They rarely attend them, even when they are invited.”

Pushing for higher wages and worker rights in the poorer developing countries, including the adoption of International Labor Organization (ILO) standards has great merit and is also a constructive way to also protect American workers.

Kelber believes it is obvious “that U.S. cooperation with labor unions from other countries with the same employer is the best way to organize giant multinationals, but the AFL-CIO has spent little time, money and resources in building close working relations with unions from abroad.”

What is restraining AFL-CIO’s President Richard Trumka? A former coal miner, then a coal miners’ lawyer, and president of the United Mine Workers, Mr. Trumka has been at the Federation for over a decade. He knows the politics of the AFL-CIO, makes great speeches about callous corporatism around the country, and has a useful website detailing corporate greed.

Unfortunately, words aside, he is not putting real, bold muscle behind the needs of America’s desperate workers.

He can start by shaking up his bureaucracy and put forth an emancipation manifesto of democratic reforms internal to the unions themselves and external to the government and the corporate giants. They all go together.

When I asked Harry Kelber whether there were any unions he admires, he named the fast-growing California Nurses Association (CNA) and the United Electrical Workers.

CNA’s executive director Rose Ann DeMoro is on the AFL-CIO Board and has urged Mr. Trumka to be more aggressive. She has secured his stepped-up support for a Wall Street financial speculation tax that could bring in over $300 billion a year. He may even join her and the nurses in a symbolic picketing of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce headquarters next month.

The ever fundamental Kelber, however, sees a plan B if the AFL-CIO does not change. “Union members should be thinking about creating a new bottoms-up labor federation,” he urges, reminding them that in the nineteen thirties, the Committee of Industrial Organizations (CIO) seceded from the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and went on “to organize millions of workers in such major corporations as General Motors, General Electric, U.S. Steel, Westinghouse, Hormel and others.”

The new labor federation, he envisions, for today’s times would be controlled by the membership and led by local unions and central labor councils that are impatient with the sluggish leadership of their international union presidents.

Harry Kelber, you epitomize the saying that “the only true aging is the erosion of one’s ideals.”

(Visit Harry’s Kelber’s website www.laboreducator.org for more of his insights.)

Another music benefit ...

2011-05-29T09:50:00.000-04:00

This one sent to me by Ray Mason. Looks like another good one.
Sunday June 12 - Benefit Rock Show For Charlie Chesterman (Scruffy The Cat, Harmony Rockets, Chaz & The Motorbikes) @ T.T. The Bear's, 10 Brookline St., Central Square, Cambridge, MA (617) 492-0082. www.ttthebears.com. Featuring The Upper Crust, Roy Sludge Trio, Raging Teens, Ray Mason Band and a "Friends Of Charlie" All-Star set! 12 noon - 5:30 p.m. Michael J. Charles says "Charlie was diagnosed with colon cancer last year. His spirits are good and he's been making progress. His outlook has broadened. He used to take things a day at a time and it's nice to see him get excited about things "down the road" like this benefit on June 12th where he intends on performing. Hope you can make it!" We love Charlie! He's been a friend and major inspiration for years. One of the greatest American rock n' rollers! See you at T.T's!!

Exciting news coming ...

2011-05-28T09:59:00.002-04:00

A quick note to let all of my blog followers and readers know that I will soon have some exciting news to announce about a new gig I have landed.
I'll give everyone a little hint: I'm going to be covering the New Hampshire primary, some State House news, and local police/fire and municipal government in Concord.
In order to succeed at this new thing, I'm going to need a lot of help from all of you. So stay tuned for more details.

A great show and a great cause

2011-05-22T20:36:00.003-04:00

The 1st Annual FREDSTOCK benefit to raise cancer awareness & Fred Ciampi memorial concert will be held at the Magic Room Gallery in Brighton at 7 p.m. on Saturday, June 18 (www.magicroomgallery.com). Tix are $20. Check out this line up, including reunion shows by Miles Dethmuffen, The 360s, and Curious Ritual. Wow!

7:15 Andy pratt
7:45 Annette Farrington
8:15 Revolutionary Snake Ensemble
8:45 Peter Moore & Sarah Rabdau
9:00 Miles Dethmuffin
9:30 Up Your Bucket
10:00 360’s
11:00 Curious Ritual
11:30 Linda Veins
12:00 Special Friends Jam

June 2011 Top 30 Noise chart

2011-05-21T07:58:00.000-04:00

Reporting: 14 different radio stations and Internet programs

1. Faces on Film – Some Weather
2. The Rudds – Get The Femuline Hang On
3. The Low Anthem – Smart Flesh
4. The Bynars – The Bynars
5. Deer Tick – The Black Dirt Sessions
6. Gene Dante & the Future Starlets “The Love Letter Is Dead”
7. The Lights Out – Primetime
8. Audrey Ryan – Thick Skin
9. Chop Chop – The Spark
10. Girlfriends – “Cave Kids”
11. Hallelujah the Hills “ Country Before Kings”
12. Hands and Knees – Wholesome
13. Hooray for Earth – True Loves
14. The Longwalls – Careers in Science EP
15. The Macrotones – First Signs of Danger
16. Old Jack – Gone Before You Know EP
17. Radio Control – Hot Audio
18. Soft Pyramids – Electric Scenes EP
19. John Powhida International Airport – Dirty Birdy and Funny Bunny
20. The Fatal Flaw – Narrow Hours
21. Spirit Kid – “Wrong Kind of Money”
22. Mango Floss – Monsters EP
23. Buffalo Tom – Skins
24. The Cinnamon Fuzz – Cruise of the Century EP
25. Freezepop – Imaginary Friends
26. J. Mascis – Several Shades of Why
27. Mean Creek – Hemophiliac EP
28. The Michael J. Epstein Memorial Library – Volume One
29. Mount Peru – My Sweetheart The Destroyer
30. The Sheila Divine – “Carve Away”

Is this the first TV ad of the 2012 campaign?

2011-05-20T20:37:00.001-04:00

This is reportedly the first television ad for the 2012 campaign, airing in South Carolina.

Jon Huntsman coming to N.H.

2011-05-19T08:32:00.002-04:00

Potential 2012 Republican presidential candidate and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman is coming to New Hampshire this weekend for a number of events. Huntsman will be at house parties and meet-and-greets around the state. Here are some of the public events, if anyone is interested:
May 19, 5:30 p.m. Meet and greet at Jesse's Restaurant in Hanover.
On Friday, May 19, he'll be in Keene, Hancock, and will speak at the Concord VFW Post 1631 at 6 Court St. at 4 p.m.
On Saturday, May 20, Huntsman will deliver a SNHU commencement address at the Verizon Wireless Arena. Later in the day, he'll have photo ops at Riley's Gun Shop in Hooksett and Robie's Country Store (a requirement for anyone running for president). At 5 p.m., Huntsman will speak at a Windham GOP meeting at the Nesmith Library.
On Sunday, Huntsman will be in the Lakes Region and in Franklin; on Monday, he'll be in Durham.
As always, the events are subject to change.

Couple of quick GOP poll notes

2011-05-19T07:59:00.002-04:00

Two new GOP polls were released yesterday which are worth a quick mention.

First, Suffolk University in Boston revealed the results of its latest national poll showing former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney "surging" in the wake of former Ark. Gov. Mike Huckabee and showman Donald Trump bowing out of consideration for the 2012 Republican nomination: ["Suffolk poll data"].

Another admittedly more curious poll coming out of Iowa by a site called the 2012 Iowa Report shows former Godfather Pizza CEO Herman Caine's support at nearly 30 percent of those polled (I'll get to that in a moment). U.S. Rep. Michelle Bachmann received 14%, Ron Paul had 10, and Newt Gingrich and Tim Pawlenty with 8 and change. The rest were below 8 percent: ["Iowa Report survey"].
The 2012 Iowa Report seems to be a blog and not a "professional" polling association (not that that means anything; polling agencies have been known to manipulate the data or produce data that is speculative at best). The site describes itself as "a project of Grassfire Nation" and "is a special survey of Iowa conservatives conducted weekly to help measure where Iowa conservatives stand on the 2012 Republican presidential field."
So, this means that Caine and Bachmann are getting a good chunk of support from those who consider themselves "Iowa conservatives" and are surveyed by the site, not people randomly called on the telephone or invited to participate in an online survey. It's a snapshot, just like everything in politics, and worth mentioning since the caucus process is completely different than a primary. Caucuses rely on rabid support and interaction, especially when held in the dead of winter. More on that as we all get closer to the election days ahead.

Huckabee decides not to run

2011-05-14T20:46:00.005-04:00

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee announced tonight he would not run for president in 2012. Most folks figured this would be his decision. I even stated such in March: ["Can Giuliani be a player in 2012?"].
You never really know until the person makes the decision. Everything else is just speculation. Most folks, it would seem from a quick Google search, were predicting he would stay out of it.
In his announcement, he took some shots at pundits and the media, and also noted that he was polling well in and out of the South, which he seemed to find surprising.
Having interviewed Huckabee twice, I can tell you that he is extremely likable, very charming (as is his wife), and, frankly, probably the strongest potential candidate for Republicans in 2012. Not just because he would run strong in southern states, working class places, and the rust belt, areas of the country that have been creamed by globalization, but also because he historically had the support of blacks in Arkansas, a voting bloc Republicans have always had problems galvanizing. He wasn't afraid to go into Democratic strongholds to look for votes - and win them.
Interestingly enough, Ted Nugent was Huckabee's guest tonight, performing a rollicking version of "Cat Scratch Fever." Huckabee was clearly enjoying himself, even rolling his eyes when Nugent offered his more sexually graphic lyrics, which seemed to embarrass Huckabee. If he is having fun and he's happy, that's a good thing. Why wreck it running for president?

Ron Paul speaks in Exeter

2011-05-14T08:32:00.000-04:00

Thanks to state Rep. Seth Cohn, R-Canterbury, for posting this AP video quote highlight reel of 2012 presidential candidate Ron Paul speaking in Exeter on his facebook account: (Seth and his wife are the ones sitting behind Rep. Paul, center-right):

End the Land Mine Plague

2011-05-13T22:34:00.000-04:00

In the Public Interest By Ralph Nader
5/13/11

Everyday around the world innocent people, many of them children, are killed or injured by millions of unexploded land mines and cluster bombs. Some of the cluster bomblets look like candy or a toy which attract a child in a field, orchard, schoolyard or by the roadside.

Powerful aggressor nations are responsible for most of these anti-personal weapons being laid from land or by air. Most recently, Libya’s rulers laid mines on the outskirts of Ajdabiya as part of its battle against the resistance.

In 2006, Israel laid huge numbers of cluster bombs in southern Lebanon each of which contains lethal bomblets. For many months after the ceasefire, the United Nations could not get Israel, to provide its cluster bomb algorithms to UN experts so they could safely neutralize these heinous weapons. In that period many Lebanese, adults and children, became cluster bomb casualties. (Visit http://www.atfl.org and see the Cluster Bomb Victims photo gallery.)

Two broad-based international treaties address the humanitarian necessity to ban both weapons, just as many horrific chemical and biological weapons have been banned for years. For both treaties—one on land mines, the more recent on cluster bombs—the United States has been the egregious odd man out under both Republican and Democratic Administrations.

The 1997 Mine Ban Treaty has been signed by 133 countries including many U.S. allies. Not the United States, Russia, Israel and China all of whom are major producers, users or sellers of these lethal weapons. As reported by Human Rights Watch, 68 U.S. Senators—enough votes to ratify the Land Mine treaty, have urged President Obama to move on this urgent matter. Sixteen Nobel Peace Laureates have urged their fellow Laureate, Barack Obama, to live up to the spirit of this award and lead the U.S. in embracing this treaty.

But the “permanent government” persists especially when its current President is so preoccupied with all his wars, attacks, incursions and intrigues with foreign leaders, tribes, clans, and spies.

Presently, the U.S. has a stockpile of ten million land mines. Washington claims “it has not used any since the 1991 Gulf War, has not exported any since 1992 and has not produced them since 1997” according to a Reuters report. The federal government also says it spent $1.5 billion since 1993 to help clear landmines and treat accident victims.

The State Department and the Pentagon stall and say year after year they are reviewing U.S. landmine policy. Years pass. Still no decision. One reason is that the U.S. wants flexibility to maintain mines in areas like the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea.

When it comes to the more grisly cluster bombs, the Convention on Cluster Munitions, a treaty banning the “use, stockpiling, production and transfer of cluster munitions” and disassembling and clearing the remaining stockpiles within ten years, has been signed by 108 nations. It went into effect August 2010 without the signature of the United States.

From Laos to Kosovo and from Chechnya to Iraq, these savage weapons continue their daily devastation. Pictures of the survivors with lost limbs provide the evidence of what havoc weapons profiteering and unaccountable bureaucrats can wreak. Some of these unexploded ordinance in Iraq and Afghanistan-Pakistan can be reworked into the dreaded IED’s against U.S. soldiers. Maybe that’s a wakeup call for the White House.

Still Obama fiddles and perplexes our allies with his indecision. He displays no such hesitancy about ordering more and more drones to fire on homes, buildings and vehicles with the imprecision of suspicion that has blown up wedding parties, gatherings of innocent non-combatants and recently, nine boys collecting firewood for their families.

More and more international civic organizations, often backed by their governments, are working together for a “mine-free world.” However, sluggishness in Washington can be compared with the speedy innovation by defense firms in the demonic configuration of ever more deadly cluster bombs. Wait and see what nanotechnology can do when basic research moves to application in this violent area.

There is all too much secrecy and too little open discussion in the political and electoral arenas. Obama’s annual weapons destruction report does not tell Americans why he refuses to sign either Treaty.

Mr. Obama has been to many ceremonies and photo opportunities lately. Perhaps he can reserve some space on his calendar to take a photo with some children seriously maimed by cluster bombs and land mines coupled with an announcement that he will take this next long-overdue step toward disarmament and lessen man’s inhumanity to man.

In the meantime, go to Human Rights Watch’s website (hrw.org) and sign their anti-landmine letter to President Barack Obama. And call the White House comment hotline (202-456-1111) and voice your resolve to end this scattered and often invisible scourge plaguing war-torn areas of the world.

No Labels? How did I miss this?

2011-05-09T08:23:00.002-04:00

This morning many of us opened our work email inboxes to find a press release about a panel discussion being presented at Northeastern University tomorrow night discussing how "to break down the political divide and combat the excessive polarization of our politics."
To those of you who live and/or work in the Boston area, this might be intriguing to you. According to the press release, at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, May 10, Ron Shaich, the co-founder and chairman of Panera Bread, and John Avlon, CNN contributor and author, will headline a No Labels panel discussion, at the Curry Student Center at Northeastern University.
No Labels folks are meeting around Massachusetts to discuss some of the issues around the movement and what can be done to fix national problems without the political labels. The press release noted that the group was formed in December 2010 and is made up of Republicans, Democrats and Independents "who believe that America’s toughest challenges will never be solved by one party alone."
I won't be able to attend due to work commitments which are starting to become a bit overwhelming (I rarely attend personal things on Tuesday night anyway). I'm intrigued, however, about some of these ideas and just how this org will attempt to move the nation forward, especially during a presidential primary year.
This is also the first I'm hearing about this org which surprises me a little. It means that I'm either really too busy with work and family or just not paying attention (It's the former, trust me). I will also say that this is something I have really been looking forward to seeing in our political system.
I seriously hope that members of this organization will come to New Hampshire to talk in the near future. They will find a much more receptive audience here than in Massachusetts, considering the makeup of our state, politically, the fact that indies wildly swing elections (which means that both parties actually listen to them up here), and that Democrats and Republicans really do work together sometimes.
I also hope that this really is a serious effort to bring people together and not just another phony organization created to damper or control indie swing voters who make the political process so interesting. If it is a serious effort, good luck to them! We need this kind of discussion.

Here are the event details included in the press release:
WHAT: Ron Shaich, John Avlon Headline No Labels Panel Discussion in Massachusetts
WHO: Ron Shaich, John Avlon, and No Labels Massachusetts leadership
WHEN: Tuesday, May 10th at 7:30PM
WHERE: Curry Student Center at Northeastern University, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA
Online @ nolabels.org.

Nader speaks about Chernobyl anniversary

2011-04-28T09:23:00.001-04:00

This was emailed out to folks the other day:

Remarks by Ralph Nader on the 25th anniversary of the nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl, Ukraine.

The disaster at Chernobyl’s reactor on April 26, 1986 continues to expose humans, flora and fauna to radioactive lethality especially in, but not restricted to, Ukraine and Belarus. Western countries continue to reflect an under-estimation of casualties by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

IAEA’s figures top off at 4000 fatalities since 1986 that is highly questionable given IAEA’s conflict of interest between its role of promoting nuclear power and monitoring its safety. An agreement between the IAEA and the World Health Organization (WHO) provides for WHO’s deference to IAEA’s casualty figures which has compromised WHO’s priority of advancing health in the world. The United Nations naturally adopts the IAEA figures and the West’s nuclear regulatory agencies, similarly committed to promotional functions, ditto these under-estimations.

The position that the level of mortality and morbidity from Chernobyl over the past quarter century is much larger comes from a compendious of 5000 scientific studies, mostly in the Slavic languages edited by Alexey Yablokov, Vassily Nesterenko and Alexey Nesterenko titled Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment. (Read it online here: http://books.google.com/books?id=g34tNlYOB3AC&lpg=PP1&ots=O15WjRWXc8&dq=alexey%20yablokov%20chernobyl&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false ) Dr. Yablokov, a biologist, is a member of the prestigious Russian Academy of Sciences. The translated edition was published under the auspices of the New York Academy of Sciences.

At a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on March 25, 2011, attended by C-SPAN, CNN and independent media, but not the mainstream media, Dr. Yablokov summarized these studies and estimated the death toll over nearly twenty five years at about one million and mounting.

Because of the mainstream media, including the major newspapers, blackout on the Yablokov report since its translated edition came out in 2009, I asked Dr. Yablokov this question at the news conference:

“Dr. Yablokov, you are a distinguished scientist in your country, as reflected in your membership in the Russian Academy of Sciences, what has been the response to your report by corporate scientists, regulatory agency scientists and academic scientists in the West? Did they openly agree in whole or in part or did they disagree in whole or in part or were they just silent?”

Academician Yablokov replied that the compilation of these many reports has been met with silence. He added that science means critical engagement with the data and implied that silence was not an appropriate response from the scientific community.

Silence, of course, is not without its purpose. For to engage, whether to rebut, doubt or affirm, would give visibility to this compendium of scientific studies that upsets the fantasy modeling by the nuclear industry and its apologists regarding the worse case scenario damage of a level 7 or worse meltdown. It would require, for example, more epidemiological studies ranging into Western Europe, such as the current review of 330 hill farms in Wales. It would insistently invite more studies of the current health and casualty data involving the 800,000 liquidators—workers passing through since 1986 who have been exposed in and around the continuing emergency efforts at the very hot disabled Chernobyl reactor. And much more.

Public silence has not excluded a sub silentio oral campaign to delegitimize the Yablokov compendium. A quiet grapevine of general dismissals—unavailable for public comment or rebuttal—has cooled members of the press and other potential disseminators of its contents, including the National Academy of Sciences, the science advisers to the President and any other thinking scientists who decide that there isn’t enough time or invulnerability to justify getting into a contentious interaction over the Yablokov report.

The ability of corporate science and its regulatory apologists to inflict sanctions on dissenters is legion. There is a long history of censorship leading to self-censorship by those who otherwise might have applied Alfred North Whitehead’s characterization of science as “keeping open options for revision” to the ideology of atomic power.

I call for an open rigorous public scientific-medical debate on the findings and casualty estimates of the Yablokov report, to determine its usefulness for necessary programs of compensation, quarantine, accelerated protective entombment of the still dangerous reactor, and expanded studies of the past and continuing ravages issuing from this catastrophe and its recycling of radioactivity through the soil, air, water and food of the exposed regions. Such a public review is what the science adviser to the President and the National Academy of Sciences should have done already and should do now. The continuing expansion of the Fukishima disaster in Japan provides additional urgency for this open scientific review.

Stripmining America, unpatriotically

2011-04-28T09:12:00.000-04:00

In the Public Interest By Ralph Nader

It is time to apply the standard of patriotism to the U.S. multinational corporations and demand that they pledge allegiance to the United States and “the Republic for which is stands…. with liberty and justice for all.” This July 4, 2011 would be good day for Americans to demand such a corporate commitment.

Born and chartered in the U.S.A., these corporations rose to their giant size on the backs of American workers and vast taxpayer-subsidized research and development handouts. When they got into trouble, whether through mismanagement or corruption, these companies rushed to Washington, D.C. for bailouts from American taxpayers. When some were challenged in foreign lands, the U.S. marines came to their rescue, as depicted decades ago by two-time Congressional Medal of Honor winner, Marine General Smedley Butler.

So what is their message to America and its workers now? It is not gratitude or loyalty. It is “we’re outta here, with your jobs and industries” to dictatorial or oligarchic regimes abroad, such as China, that know how to keep their impoverished, and abused workers under control.

Note that these company bosses have no compunction replacing U.S. workers with serf-labor, but they never replace themselves with bi-lingual executives from China, India and elsewhere who are willing to work for one-tenth or less of the huge pay packages executives get from their rubber-stamp boards of directors in the U.S.

Just this week, the Wall Street Journal headlined “Big U.S. Firms Shift Hiring Abroad.” Veteran reporter, David Wessel writes:

“U.S. multinational corporations, the big brand-name companies that employ a fifth of all American workers, have been hiring abroad while cutting back at home, sharpening the debate over globalization’s effect on the U.S. economy. The companies cut their work forces in the U.S. by 2.9 million during the 2000s while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million, new data from the U.S. Commerce Department show.”

While Mr. Wessel acknowledges that other economies, especially in Asia, are growing rapidly, he noted that “The data also underscore the vulnerability of the U.S. economy, particularly at a time when unemployment is high and wages aren’t increasing.”

Keep in mind that, while receiving all the public services, subsidies and protections in this country, large corporations have been abandoning America by shifting jobs overseas and by making our country perilously and unnecessarily dependent on foreign governments that naturally put their own interests first.

For example, the drug companies no longer have any plant in the U.S. to manufacture essential raw ingredients for important antibiotics like penicillin. In 2004, Bristol-Myers Squibb closed the last such factory in East Syracuse, N.Y. The drug industry always made lots of money here. One of every two Americans are on a prescription medicine. But the pharmaceutical companies want to make more so they have moved their production to Asia.

In 2009, The New York Times reported that “the critical ingredients for most antibiotics are now made almost exclusively in China and India. The same is true for dozens of other crucial medicines, including the popular allergy medicine prednisone; metformin, for diabetes; and amlodipine, for high blood pressure.

This flight to Asia raises serious questions. Senator Sherrod Brown (Dem. Ohio) held hearings because he accurately believed that “the lack of regulation around outsourcing is a blind spot that leaves room for supply disruptions, counterfeit medicines, even bioterrorism.”

Industrial scale production of Penicillin was developed by the U.S. war production board in World War II and many drug companies made it in U.S. plants, until the Chinese government lured the industry there with many freebies and weak safety regulations. A few years ago 95 Americans died from a Chinese produced counterfeit ingredient in the drug heparin, an anticlotting drug needed for surgery and dialysis.

As Belgium drug industry consultant, Enrico Polastro, told The New York Times: “If China ever got very upset with President Obama, it could be a big problem.” The Times concluded: “So for now, like it or not, China has the upper hand.”

Who gave China that dominant position? U.S. multinational drug companies, who along with other big U.S. companies, pushed through Congress, with Bill Clinton’s support, ratification of both NAFTA’s and the World Trade Organization’s “pull down” trade agreements. They created the very globalized structure that they now claim they are beholden to in order to meet the global competition. Clever, aren’t they?

Other unpatriotic acts include the oil companies who, despite being given a rich oil depletion tax allowance to invest in energy in the U.S., invested in oil production overseas. The U.S. is now dependent on foreign sources for most of its petroleum. Don’t forget the military-industrial giants that thrive on U.S. military expansion abroad and sell modern weapons to many dictatorial regimes which they use to oppress their people and endanger our own national security.

U.S. multinationals that export jobs abroad, show too little regard for our country, or to the U.S. communities that sustained them for decades. Greedy corporate lobbyists continue to press for more privileges and immunities, over those held by real humans, so as to be less accountable under U.S. law for corporate crimes and other mis-behaviors.

If U.S. companies continue to expand their rights of personhood through U.S. Supreme Court’s political decisions (eg. the latest being the notorious 5 to 4 Citizens United case opening up the floodgates of corporate cash against or for electoral candidates), then, they should be judged as “persons” and evaluated for their loyalty to their country of creation.

Since corporations are clearly “artificial” entities and not real human beings, narrower civil liberties standards can be applied to the impersonal and massive concentrations of power, capital and technology known as corporations

Independence Day July 4th presents an opportunity for a national attention to the need for calling out these runaway corporate giants who exploit for profit the patriotic sensibilities of Americans, but decline to be held any patriotic expectations or values.

Readers interested in joining such an effort for July 4, 2011 contact info@csrl.org.

Pretty amazing video ...

2011-04-21T06:48:00.002-04:00

This video was reportedly filmed earlier this month from the top of one of Spain's highest mountains. The detail of the stars is pretty amazing.

May 2011 Top 30 Noise chart

2011-04-20T14:03:00.002-04:00

Reporting: 14 different radio stations and Internet programs

1. The Rudds – Get The Femuline Hang On
2. J. Mascis – Several Shades of Why
3. Freezepop – Imaginary Friends
4. The Low Anthem – Smart Flesh
5. Soft Pyramids – Electric Scenes EP
6. Streight Angular – Alright EP
7. Faces on Film – Some Weather
8. The Longwalls – Careers in Science EP
9. The Bynars – The Bynars
10. Deer Tick – The Black Dirt Sessions
11. The Lights Out – Primetime
12. Battle House – Some Sleep
13. Bodega Girls - Et Tu, Bootay?
14. Buffalo Tom – Skins
15. David Wax Museum – Everything is Saved
16. Hallelujah the Hills “ Country Before Kings”
17. Hooray for Earth – True Loves
18. Mean Creek – Hemophiliac EP/”The Comedian”
19. Mount Peru – My Sweetheart The Destroyer
20. The Sheila Devine – “The Innocents”
21. Viva Viva – Viva Viva
22. Pond Scum – Pond Scum
23. The Michael J. Epstein Memorial Library – Volume 1
24. Audrey Ryan – Thick Skin
25. Brendan Boogie – “I Hate New York”
26. The Cinnamon Fuzz – Cruise of the Century EP
27. Gene Dante & the Future Starlets “The Love Letter Is Dead”
28. Spirit Kid – Spirit Kid
29. Ad Frank & the Fast Easy Women – Your Secrets Are Mine Now
30. Penis Fly Trap – Triple Suicide

Waiting for the spark ...

2011-04-18T23:22:00.000-04:00

In the Public Interest By Ralph Nader

What could start a popular resurgence in this country against the abuses of concentrated, avaricious corporatism? Imagine the arrogance of passing on to already cheated working people and the jobless enormous corporate losses? This is achieved through government bailouts and tax escapes.

History teaches us that the spark usually is smaller than expected and of a nature that is wholly unpredictable or even unimaginable. But if the dry tinder is all around, as many deprivations and polls reveal, the spark, no matter how small, can turn into a raging inferno.

The Boston Tea Party lit up the American Revolution. Storming the hated Bastille (prison) by impoverished Parisians launched the French Revolution. More recently, in December 1997, an Israeli military vehicle rammed a civilian van in the West Bank killing seven occupants and igniting the first Intifada.

Last December, a young fruit vendor, abused by thieving police in a small Tunisian town, immolated himself in the local square. Seen by millions on Facebook, this self-sacrifice launched the Tunisian and Egyptian overthrow of their long-time dictators. Later, in Syria, after police arrested 13 youngsters in a southern border town for anti-government graffiti the place erupted in riots and rallies that are spreading to other cities.

A few weeks ago, many progressives and quite a few pundits believed that the recurrent, ever larger February-March rallies in Madison, Wisconsin by workers, students and others against the Governors’ and the Legislature’s attack on public employee unions and social services, following earlier blatant corporate welfare enactments, would be the long-awaited spark.

The Madison eruption spread briefly to Ohio and Indiana where Republican officials were moving in the same direction, punishing workers and families while leaving the corporate and wealthy to count their mounting privileges. There, the crowds were neither as large nor as frequent. In all these states, the Republicans got most of what they wanted, albeit with a possible, future political price to be paid. The rallies have subsided, not even culminating—as some organizers hoped—in a gigantic march on Washington, D.C.

Granted, rallying a long repressed people into losing their fear and demanding, as in Cairo’s huge Tahrir Square “out with the dictator”, is a simple, anthromorphic goal. In our country, the rallies are hardly as clearcut, though use of the citizen right of recall for Republican legislators, and later Governor Walker himself, may produce an interesting accountability election. But sparks are difficult to sustain.

In authoritarian regimes, there are few options for dissent or airing one’s grievances. So when the spark does occur, the climate is fertile for an explosion of outrages.

In the United States, there are largely myths such as “anyone can sue,” or “anyone can run,” or “anyone can directly tell off the President or the Mayor,” or “anyone can blow the whistle.” These combine with a few celebrated successes by rebels or an ordinary David taking on a Goliath for a win here and there, from a corporate-government ruling class that bends a little so that it doesn’t break.

Meanwhile, the inequality, gouging, political exclusions and overall gaps between the top one percent and the rest tighten the grip of the oligarchy and its draining, violent militarized empire.

Loss of control over almost everything that matters, including their children to daily direct corporate marketing of junk food and violent programming, is rampant. Over seventy percent of those polled told Business Week that they believed corporations had “too much control over their lives”—and that was in 2000 before conditions and controls—viz, the Wall Street collapse, severe recession and taxpayer bailouts—worsened.

The American people don’t see much they can do to counter the pressures of greed and power that tracks them daily from debt to debt, from lower standards of living to outright penury, from denial of critical healthcare to the iron collar of the cruel credit score, from inscrutable, computerized bills to fine-print contracts trapping their sense of unfairness into waves of frustrations, from being put on hold by the companies until they’re told no, no, no or penalty, penalty, penalty!

How do we break the cycle of despair, exclusion, powerlessness, and endless betrayal by those given the authority to bring down the exploiters and oppressors to lawful accountability?

The Empire rips up the Constitution and takes the reserve army of the young unemployed to kill and die in aggressive wars of the White House’s choice, with Congress watching from the sidelines; its only role to funnel trillions of tax dollars into the insatiable war machine’s unauditable budgets. President Eisenhower wanted us to control the “military-industrial complex”. Instead it grew much more out of control. Eisenhower’s grave warning as expressed in his farewell address in 1961 was prescient.

The spark can come from a recurrent sequence of abuses that strike a special chord of deeply felt injustice. Or it could be a unique episode or bullying that tolls the feeling “enough already” throughout the land. Such sparks cannot be manufactured; the power to arouse and break people’s routines is spontaneous.

When that moment comes, millions of Americans whose self-respect and keen sense of wrong will remind them precisely why our Constitution begins with “We the People” and not “We the Corporations”. They will realize the necessity for a Jeffersonian revolution.

Taking Progressives for Granted

2011-04-16T17:12:00.000-04:00

In The Public Interest By Ralph Nader
4-12-11

When liberals and progressives have nowhere to go, New York’s new Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo can move toward the corporatist-right of the political spectrum with impunity. Brandishing an inherited $10 billion state deficit, Cuomo has earned the following description in the April 7th edition of The New York Times:

“He has clashed with unions, who he believes have helped drive the state toward bankruptcy. He has been praised by prominent conservatives like Sarah Palin and Rudolph W. Giuliani. And he has taken thousands of dollars in campaign money from the New York billionaire David H. Koch, who with his family has helped finance the Tea Party movement….

“The man who began public life advocating for homeless people won passage of a state budget that makes steep cuts to schools, health care and social services. In a year when Wall Street posted record profits, Mr. Cuomo finally rejected a politically popular income tax surcharge on the wealthy.”

Praised by the Wall Street Journal and the republican raptor, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who calls Andrew Cuomo “my soul mate,” the son of moral vision orator, former Governor Mario Cuomo, is on a roll unchallenged by his fellow Democrats and the media. Using the deficit—which is far less per capita than Connecticut’s deficit—he revels in being “Cuomo the cutter”: “I am a realist… Forget the philosophy. Here are the numbers.”

Mr. Cuomo picks his numbers so that the cuts fall on the lower economic classes, the powerless along with the reviled public employee unions. Granted, there is waste fraud or ineffectiveness in many social service programs, but Governor Cuomo is cutting the programs indiscriminately without cutting them by squeezing out the waste and eliminating ineffective programs directly.

What results is that the wasteful practitioners know how to fight to preserve their programs better than the efficient ones do. The former have allies like well-connected corporate vendors with their procurement contracts.

But there is a more blatant misfocus by Cuomo. It is his fear of Wall Street whose crooks, speculators and self-enrichment pros collapsed the economy, looting or draining savings and pensions in 2008-2009 leading to much unemployment and many closed businesses that, through the loss of tax revenue, expanded the state deficit. He refuses even to speak about holding these spoiled, back-to-business-as-usual financial giants responsible.

On the contrary he is rejecting an extension of the tax surcharge on New Yorkers and residing foreigners who make over $200,000 dollars in income a year, which expires this December. It is so much easier to tax the faceless masses. Already, lower income New Yorkers pay a slightly higher percentage of their income in all taxes imposed than do the wealthy. Regressive!

It gets worse. During his campaign for Governor, Mr. Cuomo refused to even contemplate keeping the $14 billion (some estimate higher amounts) a year that the state collects from a century-old stock transfer tax, but instantly rebates, what is really a sales tax, back to the stock brokers. New York used to keep this tax revenue until the early Eighties, when Wall Street pressure finally prevailed. Green Party candidate for Governor, Howie Hawkins, during a public debate argued that keeping these revenues would eliminate the deficit and prevent the reduction of necessary programs. On that stage, Mr. Cuomo refused to engage. Mum’s the word on Wall Street’s fair share.

Cuomo calls himself “a progressive Democrat who’s broke.” A progressive Democrat would push for sacrifice at the wealthy top and work down if necessary. Many of the wealthy derived their billions and millions from many favored policies like tax leniency and other privileges and immunities including violation of the law (some of whom Cuomo pursued as Attorney General.)

After all corporate lobbyists work hard to produce many layers of favoritism, including selling products and services to the state government, that are as profitable as they are often wasteful. Consider, for example, the immense gouging in the outsourcing of CityTime—a large ongoing contract to computerize the New York City payroll (http://www.nyc.gov/html/opa/html/about/city_time.shtml).

The costs of health care reflect big time fraud in billing practices. Should a Governor just cut benefits across the board—stranding indigent patients to suffer or die—or should he crack down on the cheating and stealing that too many vendors have refined to perfection?

To be sure it is quicker to slice arbitrarily, but there is no indication that key cost-beneficial law enforcement budgets against business crime are going to increase on Governor Cuomo’s watch.

Mr. Cuomo did relent on one budget provision, which would have enriched the hospital and insurance lobbies placing a lifetime $250,000 cap on serious baby injuries from malpractice. That was too much to defend by this “progressive Democrat” in Albany. Credit the Center for Justice and Democracy for urging that good deed (www.centerjd.org).

How far will elected Democrats from the White House on down go in capitulating to the insatiable corporate dominators if their liberal/progressive base continues to signal that they politically have nowhere to go? These voters seem to have few visible breaking points on the dark horizon of over-reaching corporatism.

Campaigns & Elections magazine sold

2011-04-16T16:47:00.000-04:00

From the inbox:

Friday, April 15 2011 – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Campaigns & Elections Magazine Acquired

Political Holdings Limited US, Inc., an affiliated company of Biteback Media which publishes Total Politics in the UK, has purchased Campaigns & Elections. The magazine remains the only nonpartisan publication for the rapidly growing political campaign and public affairs industry and conducts a series of leading political training seminars throughout the United States, Mexico, and Canada.
Shane Greer, Executive Editor of Total Politics and President of Political Holdings, will serve as Publisher.
Jordan Lieberman, former Campaigns & Elections Publisher, and current Managing Director of CampaignGrid, has been named Editor-at-Large. Jordan will manage the transition, focusing on editorial quality and driving forward the development of Campaigns & Elections’ already market-leading events program.

Campaigns & Elections will remain true to its long history of educating, informing, entertaining, and connecting members the political campaign community, public affairs industry and the politically engaged. Lieberman explains: “I grew up with Campaigns & Elections. Throughout my career it’s always been there as an educator, an innovator and a connector. It’s the house magazine for anyone and everyone engaged in the business of political campaigns and public affairs. I can’t tell you how excited I am to be involved in this next part of the magazine’s story. And I’m delighted to see the title under the control of a publisher who understands politics and understands the world of political consulting.”
All DC-based Campaigns & Elections staff will remain, including James O’Brien, Associate Publisher, Molly Hock, Director of Business Operations, Kate O’Connor, Event Development Associate, Megan Simpson, Associate Director of Political Programs. Additionally, Daniel Weiss, Managing Editor, and Noah Rothman, Online Editor, have been retained on the editorial team.

Greer and Lieberman announced that Campaigns & Elections will continue to be based in Washington, DC. Greer explained: “DC is home to politics and its home to Campaigns & Elections. That’s not going to change.”
Remarking on Greer’s role, Lieberman said: “Shane understands Campaigns & Elections, we worked together when I was Publisher. He understands its history, he understands its purpose and he understands its place in the community it serves. I look forward to working with Shane and to ensuring Campaigns & Elections’ maintains its historic position as the go-to publication for the political campaigns

Personal day today ...

2011-04-15T13:15:00.002-04:00

I decided to take a personal day from work today, the first one in like forever, to do some family stuff. Spent the morning with my youngest, baking a cake, playing around, watching Max & Ruby, and having lunch.
Later, I'll be checking out my eldest son's school play. Can't wait to see it. Such fun. :-)
It's been a good day to decompress. Got a lot on the mind and I'm going to try not to do any work over the weekend. Of course that means that Monday will be a train wreck, but whatever ... There's a lot going on so I will try and post some new comments during the weekend. Or maybe I will blow that off too. LOL. Stay tuned.

The Graydon Carter delusion

2011-04-10T06:41:00.006-04:00

I love Vanity Fair magazine. I have some spats with it every once in a while and, sometimes, I let the subscription lapse. For the most part, I've enjoyed its journalism. It is worth the $12 to $15 a year I spend on the magazine.
However, its editor, Graydon Carter, can really drive me bonkers sometimes, especially when he completely mangles the facts. Of course, that is an editor's privilege to be able to choose which facts you want to admit to when making a point. Every editor is guilty of that ... it's part of the job. However, Carter has a tendency to do this each and every month, over and over and over again.
While I was against the Iraq invasion and didn't vote for or ever support George W. Bush, it got so that I almost canceled my subscription because I was really sick and tired of reading his rants about W. I didn't, in the end. Instead, I just didn't read the Editor's Letter. Maybe that is the solution to the future after reading this month's Editor's Letter.
Carter published this for the May edition: ["The 1 Percent Dissolution"].
Let me preface my comments by saying that I hate the fact that my commentary about taxes looks as if I'm defending or protecting the super rich with words. They don't need my protection. And no, I'm not super rich. That is not the point of my commentary.
My points are about what the best solutions are to the federal government problem. And it is a problem. Simply put, again, neither political party has a lock on the truth or the answers. The solutions are about both the role of government and helping those in need. The solutions are about reducing the size of the federal government, in order to reduce the deficit and debt, and then coming up with a revenue stream to pay for that structure that is fair and equitable.
Income - the fruit of one's labor - should be taxed as little as possible. Period. Personally, I don't have a problem with taxing unearned income higher than earned income. I believe in transaction taxes on Wall Street and sensible corporate taxes that charge every business a minimum tax, without deductions. I also believe in tariffs on imports too. So that's where I come down on things, generalizing as simply as possible. In other words, I'm not a tax-cutting right-wing nut.
In his letter this month, he writes the following:

Cohen and Kudlow are prime examples of the danger of trying to live in your own socio-economic comfort bubble and wanting to have a public voice at the same time.

So is reading the Carter Editor's Letter each month too. Look in the mirror buddy. And, while you're at it, why don't you venture outside your Manhattan to Los Angeles axis to find out what is going on in the real world sometime. Vanity Fair's journalism will be a lot better for it.
Noting that Larry Kudlow used to work for BearStearns a quarter of a century ago, Carter writes:

Today, the top 1 percent of Americans takes in twice as much of the country’s income as it did then—nearly 25 percent. And, incredibly, the richest 1 percent now controls 40 percent of the nation’s wealth.

OK, yes, that's true. But Carter, they also pay 40 percent of the income taxes right now too. Or, did you not Google long enough to figure that stat out? Yes, dear readers, it's true: "The rich get richer, The poor get the picture, The bombs never hit you when you're down so low," as Midnight Oil used to sing. However, the rich also already pay 40 percent of the income taxes now. How much more is enough? Forty-five percent? Fifty? How about just take it all? Well, if you take it all, the federal government still won't have enough money. Taking every penny the rich people make will only cover one-fourth of the FY10 federal budget. In other words, the federal government is just too big.
Carter writes:

History, [Stiglitz] says, has not been kind to societies so heavily skewed toward the rich. When wealth is concentrated in a small group, so is power—and power is almost invariably used to keep that wealth concentrated in those few soft hands. The result? Investment in education and infrastructure dries up. Laws meant to level the playing field are changed to make it tilt. A sense of national common purpose slowly, and then quickly, erodes.

Well, it's true about power corrupting and absolute power absolutely corrupting. As well, as Thomas Jefferson wrote: "I may err in my measures, but never shall deflect from the intention to fortify the public liberty by every possible means, and to put it out of the power of the few to riot on the labors of the many." Which is why Jefferson wrote to John Adams, years before, about the need for rebellion from time to time. However, where does Carter get off challenging that education and infrastructure are being starved? In what world?
As noted by the Evergreen Freedom Foundation and many other organizations and studies of public education expenses in the United States, during the last 30 years, spending has increased by 61 percent above inflation (doubled in actual spending) without any clear, positive results of a similar increase in student achievement. So, if funding has increased by 61 percent above inflation or even doubled, how is "investment in education" drying up? Well, it's not. It's a flat out lie.
Let's look at infrastructure. While Carter has said that funding has dried up, the exact opposite is true.
Since 1956, spending on infrastructure as determined by the Congressional Budget Office - meaning roads, bridges, schools, utility pipelines, etc. - has increased by 300 percent. On roads and water pipelines alone, the increase was nearly 500 percent. It is true that as a percentage of the gross domestic product, infrastructure has decreased from 1.6 percent to 1.2 percent during the same time period. But that is only because the size of the federal budget and the economy has grown significantly during the last 60 years thereby making the percentage of GDP smaller. But in actual dollar amounts, no, Carter, infrastructure has not dried up either. Another lie.
I guess, one would ask, when does someone write an editor's note about Carter completely lying about the facts? From now on, let's just call it "The Graydon Carter delusion," a dangerous thing when you live inside your own bubble of Northeastern liberalism (instead of classic American liberalism) and have control of a multimillion dollar magazine. I'll keep buying Vanity Fair magazine but, instead, vent a little, about its delusional editor.

OMW! It's Iggy Pop!!

2011-04-07T22:53:00.001-04:00

And I can't believe Pia lost. She was the best one the other night. Oh well.

Enjoying "American Idol" ...

2011-04-07T07:36:00.003-04:00

Yes, I admit it, I'm getting sucked into the vortex that is "American Idol" once again. And, yes, I will admit that it is not my fault since wifey has the television on and wants to watch it anyway.
But seriously, as someone who worked (or attempted to "work") in the "music business," it is a fun waste of a couple of hours a week when your brain is already pretty fried.
And even though we have only watched it for a few years now, this crop of young people are really very talented and all quite diverse in their presentations. I mean, they have the cool cat Jewish guy with the upright bass, the hot South American immigrant with an even hotter voice, the black guy who is a little giddy and swishy and has the most amazing pipes in the world, the white boy rocker with Tourettes Syndrome and a tremendous heartbreak sob story, the deep southern country and Italian crooners who the girls scream for, etc., I mean, these folks are all real melting pot Americans, not just cookie-cutter Hollywood pretty faces with a little talent.
Steve Tyler from Aerosmith has moved on from his initial perv moments analyzing all of the hot stock coming through the door during the initial tryouts to actually giving good advice, commending the performers and even, strangely, thanking them, when he is so moved by what they're doing with their voices.
Not everything in life is serious and intellectual. And when you consider some of insane and inane programming on television these days - I mean, I hardly watch anything other than the news - the drama and fun of "American Idol" is nice to have, even for a moment or two.
That all said, I think Jacob Lusk (said giddy black guy) is going to win. We'll have to wait and see.

The reason NH has a budget "crisis" ...

2011-04-06T21:06:00.004-04:00

Finally, finally, somebody said it: ["Radical? Extremist? Ignorant? Not me!"].
I don't know this state representative, but I certainly hope he doesn't get unelected for doing the right thing. Simply put, this is why New Hampshire has a state budget "crisis":

In the last four years, the Democrats increased the New Hampshire budget by about $2.5 billion - an increase of almost 30 percent.

This is correct. The budget increased almost 17 percent in two years and another 11 or 12 in the next two years (we budget biennially here).
The inflation rate during that time period was about 8 percent. In other words, the state budget increased nearly four times the rate of inflation when the Democrats controlled the Legislature. And we didn't vote them in to do that! We voted the Democrats control of the Legislature in 2006 to be fiscally responsible and because we were mad at the Republicans for wasting billions in those stupid, unneeded wars.

This absurd increase was funded by over 80 increased taxes and fees and was made on the backs of the majority of hardworking New Hampshire residents during a major recession. Any board of selectmen or CEO would be fired for such an absurd increase. And those who voted for the absurd increase were fired - that is how I got elected.

That's right. Many of us, including me, split our tickets in 2010. I only voted for one of the four Democrats running for the Legislature this year (I voted for one Republican, who didn't win, and blanked the rest. I did, however, cast votes for Democrats Gov. Lynch and Kuster for Congress, and would again). That person has, regretfully, voted against this budget and voted for broad-based taxes. He also voted for the LLC tax that would have hit us supposed "rich" people for $850 we don't have. I continue to vote for this representative because he is a good man and supports other good things. But he is wrong on this issue.

Listen to Gov. John Lynch's state-of-the-state address in 2006 and 2008, as he discusses how well New Hampshire is doing and how highly we are ranked. Then think of how, after the $750 million cut takes effect, we will still be spending $1.75 billion more than four years ago.

Again, we are in the middle of a major crisis here. We are overspending. We can't implement an income or sales tax because it will hurt working families, renters, the poor, and the elderly. Period. It's not a solution. Don't believe the hype and the lies. The Democrats in our Legislature overspent and now, the Republicans are in there trying to fix things. Maybe they have gone too far. That remains to be seen. But something has to be done and this is a good place to start.

Quick note to readers, old and new ...

2011-04-03T07:56:00.003-04:00

Hey everyone, thanks for reading and participating. I appreciate it.
I apologize in advance for not always keeping things updated and fresh. But clearly, at least trying to update things, is paying off a bit since there has been a nice uptick in traffic of late (there have been more posts in March and April than there were in January and February, for example; there are more followers than there were just a few months ago, etc.).
As well, on two different occasions in the last year or so, readers have used some of my comments and work in college papers and others things that they have later sourced online (It’s a bit difficult to track but some folks are nice enough to do thorough sourcing, which is kinda cool).
At the same time, I have been given more responsibility at work (they've given me a second paper to co-edit) so I don't have a ton of time to write about my personal and political observations. Obviously, with 2012 coming up - shouldn't it be here already? - I'll need to put the pedal to the metal a bit as well as doing my best to keep things fresh and up-to-date.
One thing I have done is shut off the comment filter so your comments will be posted immediately after you write them. I don't know why I had the filter on in the first place. I think it was just always on and I never bothered to shut it off. The site has never had a need to filter comments. In fact, I think I have more comments on posts now than ever before, and I thank you all for that. It's just always been that way, I think (a quick look through shows that I really get heavier traffic during election season but not a lot of posts). Everyone who has commented here has been really cool so there isn't any need to filter the comments, I don't think.
As you all know from reading, I'm very interested in deep public policy thinking and commonsense ideas, at the same time. I know, that's a bit weird, but whatever .... Please though, if you see anything along the road of life, please take the time to share it with me and Politizine readers. Since I don't come at things from a left or right perspective, Politizine is a bit different than most political blogs. But I really do enjoy absorbing information and thinking about things. Maybe I think about things too much, I don't know. I haven't found the "mind shut-off" pill yet ... have you?
Thanks again everyone for reading and participating.

A fool and his money are easily parted, Part 2

2011-04-03T07:49:00.002-04:00

Clearly, some people, have too much money on their pockets: ["Michele Bachmann tops Mitt Romney in fundraising"].
But Rep. Michele Bachmann will burn through it for them ... BTW, people aren't giving a ton of money to Mitt because he has scads of it. Sure, some true believers will give him money. He'll raise millions, when he runs, just like he did last time. But they know he will bankroll a good portion of his campaign to remain competitive.
I still can't believe Bachmann is on the House Intelligence Committee. Good grief!

A fool and his money are easily parted, Part 1

2011-04-03T07:47:00.001-04:00

Detroit Rock City this ain't, it would seem: ["Charlie Sheen show sputters in Motor City"].