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VPrint\u000a(Photo: Number 10 / Flickr)\u000aAfter a quarter-century of buzz over global warming, the climate talkers are at it again, doing whatever it is they do. Visitors to the next big climate change summit, in an act of glorious irony, will pack Paris-bound jets flown by Air France \u2014 one of the meeting\u2019s big corporate sponsors with deep ties to fossil fuels.\u000aThe UN-organized meeting won\u2019t take place until December, but Pope Francis is already doing his best to make sure global powers give it plenty of bandwidth.\u000aDays before a conservative Italian newspaper leaked the Pope\u2019s game-changing encyclical, the leaders of the seven richest industrial nations (G7) were already talking about the need for \u201cdeep cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions\u201d and \u201ca decarbonization of the global economy over the course of this century.\u201d\u000aTranslation: The G7 leaders want expiration-date stickers slapped on the oil, gas, and coal industries.\u000aIdentifying the culprits that pump carbon into today\u2019s economy or promising to do something about it themselves would have been bolder. Failing to name names shows how cowed these presidents and prime ministers are.\u000aStill, collectively kicking the world\u2019s fossil-fuel addiction means no more mining coal by blasting the tops off mountains. No more offshore oil platforms prone to bursting into flames. No more telling communities they can\u2019t ban frackers from operating near freshwater sources.\u000a\u201cWhat is occurring is in many ways unprecedented in the history of international cooperation in respect to vision and scale,\u201d chirped Christiana Figueres , the UN\u2019s top climate change official.\u000aFigueres makes it sound like a big-fossil deal. As Pope Francis might say, Hallelujah. But wait. They\u2019re talking about the year 2100.\u000aHow old will you be 85 years from now? Oh, right. You\u2019ll be dead. Me too. I doubt 134 will be the new 30 at the turn of the next century. No one writing this accord will get to personally declare the world\u2019s energy matrix fossil-free. Probably none of their children either.\u000aPunting to a generation not yet born isn\u2019t leadership. Real to-do lists are doable during your own lifespan.\u000aDid Abraham Lincoln promise when he delivered the Emancipation Proclamation that all enslaved people would be free by 1948?\u000aWhen the Supreme Court demanded an end to the segregation of American schoolchildren with all deliberate speed , did the justices add \u201cso get it over and done with before 2039 rolls around\u201d?\u000aAnd when Ronald Reagan shouted in Cold War-weary Berlin \u201cTear down this wall,\u201d did he elaborate with the words: \u201cno later than the year 2072\u201d?\u000aNo, no, and no.\u000aSure, re-wiring the global grid takes time. But given what\u2019s at stake and the speed with which the costs of wind and solar power are dropping, 85 years is too long. How about some gumption and a bigger hurry?\u000aApparently G7 leaders and some climate talkers flirted with a brisker pace that would have meant kicking the worldwide fossil-fuel habit by 2050. Both groups wound up saying \u2014 I\u2019m paraphrasing here \u2014 \u201cnah.\u201d Aiming for 2100 is a compromise between doing nothing and doing what\u2019s necessary right now.\u000aOur country, the world\u2019s No. 2 carbon polluter after China, can transition to full reliance on energy derived from wind, water, and sunlight by 2050, half a century faster than the G7\u2019s timetable. A group of researchers from several leading universities even drew up a state-by-state roadmap.\u000aAs the mother of two kids still in elementary school, bequeathing this headache to them seems bad enough. Why are global leaders shunting this tough job to our children\u2019s grandchildren?\u000aEmily Schwartz Greco is the managing editor of OtherWords, a non-profit national editorial service run by the Institute for Policy Studies.\u000a
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sVhttp://fpif.org/?p=28901
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VAn Unprecedented Uprising Against Impunity in Guatemala\u000aA broad-based movement against official corruption is rocking Guatemala to its core.\u000aPrint\u000a(Photo: Nelton Rivera / Prensa Comunitaria)\u000aA massive tax fraud scheme exposed in Guatemala this April might once have been viewed as business as usual in a country that has struggled with corruption at the highest levels for decades.\u000aInstead, Guatemalans got angry.\u000aA protest organized via social media quickly erupted, sparking an ongoing wave of demonstrations that\u2019s drawn the participation of tens of thousands. For the first time in Guatemala\u2019s recent history, a broad cross section of society \u2014 including politicians, students from both private and public universities, the country\u2019s powerful business lobby, indigenous peoples, and members of a historically passive middle class \u2014 joined together in a unified call for the removal of corrupt officials.\u000aVice President Roxana Baldetti was the first to step down, handing in her resignation on May 8. Although she wasn\u2019t implicated in the initial corruption investigation, she was plunged into controversy when her private secretary, Juan Carlos Monzón Rojas, was identified as the leader of the fraud ring. Shortly after her resignation, Baldetti was also placed under investigation.\u000aAs investigations continue, high-level officials in a number of major executive branch offices have resigned or been fired. President Otto Pérez Molina has dismissed or asked for resignations from his chief of intelligence, the ministers of the environment and of energy and mines, and his interior minister, among others. Many of the ousted officials are members of Pérez Molina\u2019s inner circle and are under investigation for various acts of alleged corruption.\u000aThese ministry shake-ups have not been enough to quell calls for the president\u2019s resignation, and weekly protests continue to fill Guatemala City\u2019s central plaza. With the curtain pulled back to expose what many have called one of the most corrupt administrations in Guatemala\u2019s history, the country is facing its biggest political crisis in years \u2014 and just a few months before September\u2019s general elections.\u000aOn June 10, Guatemala\u2019s Supreme Court accepted a petition to allow congress to decide whether to revoke President Pérez Molina\u2019s immunity from prosecution for possible involvement in acts of corruption. Whatever the president\u2019s fate, sustained public outrage has united a diverse Guatemalan public and represents an incredible opportunity for the country to undergo historic and positive changes.\u000a(Photo: Nelton Rivera / Prensa Comunitaria)\u000aCorruption Exposed\u000aThe initial scandal that sparked public disapproval involves a criminal network that\u2019s been called La Línea, or \u201cThe Line,\u201d in reference to a certain cell phone number importers called to negotiate the amount they paid in customs taxes. Thanks to the network, businesses could receive an illegal \u201cdiscount\u201d on the required fees when their property cleared customs.\u000aApproximately 50 percent of the balance was then paid to the state. The rest went to a network of defrauders that included corrupt officials and their collaborators.\u000aOn April 16, authorities arrested 22 people \u2014 including the current and former heads of Guatemala\u2019s tax collection agency. The eight-month investigation was a joint effort between Guatemala\u2019s Public Prosecutor\u2019s Office and the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), a UN-backed institution charged with investigating and helping disband clandestine and parallel power structures linked to the state.\u000aProsecutors estimate that Guatemala lost at least $120 million in tax revenue in the eight-month period to the scam. And as the investigation continues to unfold, it\u2019s revealed an inter-connected web of judicial corruption that\u2019s been nicknamed the \u201cLaw Firm of Impunity,\u201d resulting in investigations into judges and justices on Guatemala´s Supreme Court.\u000a\u201cThe parallel power structure that has been revealed through the CICIG\u2019s investigations is derived precisely from the existence of a larger \u2018pact of impunity,\u2019\u201d said Iduvina Hernández, a political analyst, columnist, and the executive director of the Association for the Study and Promotion of Security in Democracy.\u000aThis \u201cpact of impunity\u201d is referenced frequently in Guatemala to signal the ways that members of powerful sectors work together to protect their resources, influence, and immunity to prosecution. Often this occurs at the expense of the poor. In the case of La Línea, for example, individuals at the top of the chain allegedly raked in millions of dollars per year while state institutions lacked important resources for medicine, education, and basic security.\u000aIt was this dramatic contrast that inspired many to protest. A massive demonstration on May 16 \u2014 some 60,000 strong \u2014 expressed anger at the country\u2019s deep inequalities, as protesters held signs illustrating what income lost to La Línea could have provided in public services.\u000aJust a week later, a second investigation by CICIG and the Public Prosecutor\u2019s Office revealed another corruption scandal within Guatemala\u2019s Social Security Institute, or IGSS.\u000aThe institute had awarded a kidney dialysis contract to the company Droguería Pisa in exchange for kickbacks to government officials, including IGSS employees and the head of the Guatemalan Central Bank. Pisa had no expertise providing the treatment, and 13 have people have since died. Seventeen public officials and other collaborators have been arrested, but most notable has been the arrest of the president of the board of the IGSS, Juan de Dios Rodríguez \u2014 a powerful former military man who once served as Pérez Molina\u2019s private secretary.\u000a(Photo: Nelton Rivera / Prensa Comunitaria)\u000aWhat\u2019s Next for Guatemala?\u000aAs the situation in Guatemala changes daily, many scenarios could play out. The intense demand for Pérez Molina to step down \u2014 and for elections to be postponed until serious reforms are passed \u2014 reflects the almost universal recognition that the system is broken.\u000aPérez Molina has stated that he won\u2019t resign, and Guatemala\u2019s powerful business lobby \u2014 along with the U.S. government \u2014 seems willing to back him in order to preserve some stability.\u000aAnd while the September elections are still likely to move forward as planned, the pool of candidates have left voters feeling deflated, and the call for \u201cvoto nulo\u201d \u2014 or a null vote \u2014 is growing in urban areas. Many analysts caution that swapping one politician for another will not address deep concerns over systemic corruption.\u000a\u201cWhat we need is not a new candidate,\u201d said Hernández, \u201cbut to change fundamentally how the game of politics is played.\u201d\u000aAnother possible, yet unlikely, scenario exists in which Guatemala could convoke a \u201cNational Constituent Assembly\u201d \u2014 a group of citizens named to initiate a process to draft a new constitution.\u000a\u201cThere are many groups interested in changing the Constitution,\u201d said Anabella Sibrián, Central American representative for the International Platform Against Impunity. \u201cGuatemala could stand to gain or lose a lot depending on how the process unfolds and the correlation of political forces at the time the assembly is convoked.\u201d\u000aThese proposals, however, have also prompted fears that a break in the constitutional order could create a power vacuum, doing Guatemala more harm than good.\u000aMeanwhile, corruption is only one piece of the puzzle. Many civil society and human rights groups have taken the opportunity to draw links between current scandals and other ongoing concerns \u2014 including a record level of attacks against human rights defenders , a level of aggression against the press not witnessed in a decade, and the blatant manipulation of the selection of an attorney general and judges in 2014.\u000a\u201cGuatemala is at a crossroads, but not because of the current crisis,\u201d Hernández explained. \u201cGuatemala has been at a crossroads since impunity has been, essentially, state policy.\u201d\u000a(Photo: Nelton Rivera / Prensa Comunitaria)\u000aWill the U.S. Continue \u201cBusiness as Usual\u201d?\u000aAs Guatemalans demand widespread reform, the United States also has an important opportunity to reevaluate the role it can play in supporting meaningful change.\u000aThe U.S. government has been a consistent supporter of Pérez Molina, himself a very controversial figure. He\u2019s the subject of an open investigation into his alleged involvement in the torture and assassination of guerilla leader Everardo Bámaca in the early 1990s, and many have raised questions about his possible participation in acts of genocide against the indigenous Ixil population in the 1980s. During his 3.5 years in office, the U.S. has also worked closely with his administration to \u201cstrengthen\u201d institutions, improve prisons, train security forces, and bulk up border security.\u000aAt the same time, the prisons have been through numerous scandals, and the security forces \u2014 both military and police \u2014 have been responsible for a number of extrajudicial executions and widespread corruption.\u000aAlong with the urgent need to reform laws related to Guatemala\u2019s political parties and elections, judicial strengthening and independence is probably the single most important next step to address the country\u2019s myriad of problems. And some U.S. officials have stressed a commitment to supporting justice.\u000aYet overall, U.S. policy has been largely focused on \u201csecurity\u201d and, most recently, on preventing migration from the region.\u000aThe U.S. Congress is currently debating a $1 billion request from President Barack Obama for investment in Central America following a spike in the undocumented migration of unaccompanied minors last summer. The proposed funding package closely mirrors the objectives of a parallel plan, called the \u201cAlliance for Prosperity for the Northern Triangle,\u201d which was created by the region\u2019s three presidents and the Inter-American Development Bank.\u000aCivil society organizations from throughout the hemisphere have expressed grave concerns about the plan, including a lack of civil society participation in its formation and worries that it could actually exacerbate poverty and violence.\u000aOrganizations in both the U.S. and Central America are watching closely to see how the U.S. will engage in Guatemala given the government\u2019s loss of legitimacy.\u000aNevertheless, in a country that hasn\u2019t seen such diverse and massive protests in many years, there is hope in Guatemala that sustained public outcry could create a space for long-term change. The United States, too, should make sure that its own policies \u2014 which have in the past exacerbated repression and violence in the region \u2014 provide real support for efforts to dismantle corruption and strengthen justice.\u000aLindsay Bigda is a communications associate for the Guatemala Human Rights Commission.\u000a
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sVhttp://www.ips-dc.org/francis-v-washington/
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VOriginally in OtherWords .\u000aPhoto: Giulio Napolitano/Shutterstock\u000aPope Francis, the humble yet bold leader of the world\u2019s 1.2 billion Catholics, has offered an inspiring 21st century vision to all people. It\u2019s a vision that\u2019s been sorely missing in the halls of power.\u000aIn an encyclical focused on the environment, he details how we can save the planet while helping billions of the world\u2019s poor in this life \u2014 not just in heaven. The letter isn\u2019t for the faint-hearted. It\u2019s a wake-up call that if we continue fueling our lifestyles with oil, gas, and coal, we\u2019ll end life as we know it.\u000aHe asks us all to think and act big, to replace our dig, burn, and dump economy with one that creates dignified work for people who can rebuild our inner cities, retrofit our buildings to make them energy-efficient, and provide clean water and healthy food.\u000a\u201cWe need to strengthen the conviction that we are one single human family,\u201d he reminds us. \u201cThere are no frontiers or barriers, political or social, behind which we can hide.\u201d We all have a stake, therefore, in helping poorer nations leapfrog over dirty fossil-fuel industries and instead build their economies around green energy and energy efficiency.\u000aContrast this enlightened global vision with the one that\u2019s dominating political debate in Washington. Republicans have banded together with President Barack Obama behind a failed 20th century model of international economic rules that favors the wealthy and giant corporations over people and the planet.\u000aFor weeks, the White House pressed Congress to approve so-called Trade Promotion Authority \u2014 or \u201cfast track\u201d \u2014 which would facilitate passage of proposed trade agreements with 11 Asia-Pacific nations and the European Union.\u000aThese deals don\u2019t make trade \u201cfreer.\u201d Trade already occurs with almost no impediments. Instead, these pacts will make it harder to carry out Pope Francis\u2019s vision by restricting the authority of governments around the world to regulate large corporations.\u000aIn particular, these accords will empower corporations to sue governments over policies that purportedly threaten their investments. This could include laws designed to protect the Earth and ensure that it\u2019s around for future generations to enjoy.\u000aMy plea to members of Congress is this: Abandon the failed trade model of the 20thcentury. Instead of Trade Promotion Authority, we need \u201cPeople and Planet Promotion Authority.\u201d\u000aThis would end the outrageous subsidies Congress gives fossil fuel corporations \u2014 and shift these funds to the small and medium businesses that pay people a living wage to build a fossil-free economy. It would fairly tax Wall Street, the wealthy, and corporations to pay for this green transition. And it would launch a deliberate effort to spur the growth of wind, solar, and other renewable alternatives.\u000aThe voices of corporate lobbyists have prevailed long enough in Washington. As Pope Francis has warned us, it\u2019s time to listen to \u201cthe cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor.\u201d\u000aJohn Cavanagh is the director of the Institute for Policy Studies.\u000a
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V(Photo:\u000aEuropean Commission DG ECHO / Flickr)\u000aA few years ago, Southeast Asia\u2019s rapidly growing \u201ctiger economies\u201d were the envy of the world. Today, the area is better known for a trio of maladies: ethnic cleansing, burgeoning inequality, and super-exploited labor.\u000aThe sorry state of human rights and labor protections in the region has been driven home by three events that captured the world\u2019s attention.\u000aOn the high seas, thousands of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar found themselves stranded and desperate when neighboring states refused to accept them. In Indonesia, investigators discovered illegal fish factories run by captive migrant laborers. And last May in the Philippines, 72 workers perished in a horrific factory fire.\u000aAs the Association of Southeast Asian States, or ASEAN, prepares to integrate the region\u2019s economies by the end of 2015, it\u2019s worth asking what it is these countries will be combining \u2014 their markets or their deep-seated social problems?\u000aEthnic Cleansing in Myanmar\u000aThe plight of the Rohingya is the culmination of three years of riots and violent attacks directed at Burma\u2019s Muslim minority, who make up over 30 percent of the population in the state of Rakhine.\u000aTensions between the Rohingya and the Buddhist majority have been building for years. With the easing of military control as the country makes its jerky transition to democracy, friction has given way to violence, oftentimes sparked by wild allegations of Rohingya men raping Buddhist women.\u000aBurmese authorities officially consider the 1.3 million Rohingya to be stateless intruders from neighboring Bangladesh, largely abandoning them to the tender mercies of Buddhist mobs often led by monks. The result has been the region\u2019s worst case of ethnic cleansing in modern memory.\u000aTo escape brutal persecution, many Rohingya have increasingly resorted to flight, contracting smugglers and traffickers to bring them by sea and land to other countries. This option has turned out to be as perilous as staying . Traffickers have sold many Rohingya, along with other Burmese, as forced labor to the notorious Thai fishing industry. Others are met with hostile receptions from neighboring countries.\u000aLast month, an estimated 7,000 Rohingya refugees crammed into fragile boats bound for friendlier shores. Yet they were repelled by the Thai, Malaysian, and Indonesian navies and left floating aimlessly in the Indian Ocean and Andaman Sea.\u000aUnder pressure from the United Nations and other international bodies, Myanmar\u2019s neighbors eventually softened their stance toward the refugees. The Philippines opened its borders to some. And after heavy criticism, so did Malaysia and Indonesia \u2014 if only grudgingly . Thailand, however, made clear it would not offer asylum to any of them, a hardline stance also adopted by Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott.\u000aVoices from all over the globe, including the United Nations General Assembly, have called on the Myanmar government to end the ethnic cleansing and give citizenship rights to the Rohingya. One voice, however, has been notably silent : Nobel Prize laureate Aung Sang Suu Kyi.\u000aNever in the last three years has the famed pro-democracy advocate spoken on behalf of the Rohingya, even if only to ask her Buddhist compatriots to stop persecuting them. Owing to international pressure, her party, the National League for Democracy, has \u2014 finally and grudgingly \u2014 called for citizenship for the Rohingya. But the statement was not issued in her name.\u000aObservers speculate that Suu Kyi hopes to avoid offending the country\u2019s Buddhist majority, whose votes her party needs in Burma\u2019s coming electoral contests \u2014 and which she herself will need if she runs for president. But the longer \u201cDaw Suu\u201d stays silent, the more people will conclude that she doesn\u2019t believe the Rohingya deserve to be citizens either \u2014 and the more this global moral icon will be regarded as complicit in genocide.\u000a(Photo: forum.linvoyage.com / Flickr)\u000aSlave Labor in Thailand\u2019s Fishing Industry\u000aThis March, a superb Associated Press report on forced labor on the Indonesian island of Benjina called the world\u2019s attention to one of Southeast Asia\u2019s unspoken dirty secrets: the dependence of the Thai fishing industry on slavery. Over 500 workers were found imprisoned on the island.\u000aThe resort to slave labor, according to a report by the International Labor Organization and Thailand\u2019s Chulalongkorn University, comes as profits are being squeezed by smaller catches, higher fuel costs, and the reluctance of Thai nationals to work in a low-paying, hazardous industry involving long periods at sea.\u000aSo Thai fishing and canning factories have turned to foreign workers \u2014 especially from Burma and Cambodia, where smuggling networks have sprung up to recruit workers. Deception is almost invariably involved, with prospective workers promised higher-paying construction or agriculture jobs only to be sold to fishing vessels, where they work for a pittance or nothing at all.\u000aThe traffickers treat these undocumented workers with extreme brutality. Recently discovered mass graves \u2014 reportedly containing the remains of hundreds of people along smuggling routes in Thailand and Malaysia \u2014 bear mute testimony to what happens to those who get sick, suffer accidents, or resist.\u000aGovernment officials are often worse than useless. As the ILO-Chulalongkorn report notes, \u201cThe direct involvement and/or facilitation of law enforcement officials in these crimes is a significant problem that has remained inadequately addressed. Although authorities reportedly investigated several cases of complicity by law enforcement officials during 2011-2012, no prosecutions or convictions were carried through.\u201d Not surprisingly, \u201crather than seeking out protection for abuses or filing complaints to the proper authorities, many migrant fishers will choose to keep quiet out of fear of blacklisting, arrest, or deportation.\u201d\u000aThe highly publicized recent arrest of a three-star Thai general for human trafficking underlines how deeply government officials are involved in the business. Yet few anticipate that he\u2019ll be successfully prosecuted.\u000aA Decimated Working Class in the Philippines\u000aGovernment complicity was also instrumental in the Philippines\u2019 worst-ever factory fire last May.\u000aIn interviews with some 30 survivors, I learned that both national and local authorities had issued safety clearances for the Kentex footwear factory, despite the fact that it had no emergency exits, the windows were barred , no fire drills were conducted, and no serious fire inspections were carried out. The obviously lax enforcement of safety regulations is not accidental. Kentex incarnates the Philippine government\u2019s lenient treatment of the capitalist enterprises it sees as a source of growth, wealth, and jobs.\u000aAccording to the survivors, some 20 percent of the workforce at the factory consisted of casual workers or \u201cpakyawan,\u201d including some minors brought in by their mothers to earn some extra money for the family over the summer. They received about $4.50 for a day\u2019s work, or less than half the current minimum wage for the national capital region.\u000aAnother 40 to 60 percent were contractual workers recruited by a \u201cmanpower agency,\u201d an organization devised to allow employers to avoid regularizing workers who might otherwise vote to form a union. While these non-unionized workers received the minimum daily wage, the agency skimmed off the required social security, health, and housing benefits provided by the employer. \u201cThey don\u2019t pay our monthly installments,\u201d one survivor angrily told me.\u000aAt the most, 20 percent of the workers were regular employees who belonged to a union. But as one of the union members himself volunteered cynically, \u201cWe are a company union.\u201d\u000a(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)\u000aA Secret No Longer\u000aKentex is a microcosm of labor-capital relations in Southeast Asia today.\u000aThe trend toward contractualization \u2014 pushed by local and foreign investors, accommodated by governments, and legitimized by economists \u2014 has led to the disorganization and de-unionization of the labor force, which in turn makes rights abuses and disasters all the more likely. Today, only about 10 percent of the Philippine work force is organized, with one prominent labor leader admitting, \u201cIronically, labor unions are not as politically strong today as during the dictatorial regime of President Marcos.\u201d\u000aIn his \u201cState of the Nation\u201d address last year, President Benigno Aquino III boasted that there were only two worker strikes in 2013 and just one in 2014. That the president considered this news positive only showed how detached from reality he was, for the radical reduction of the number of strikes doesn\u2019t come from improving living standards but from the weakening of labor\u2019s bargaining power. It comes from pro-management government policies, a widespread failure to enforce labor laws, and aggressive union-busting by employers.\u000aSome labor leaders see a silver lining in the Kentex tragedy. \u201cThe 72 lives lost were a terrible, terrible loss,\u201d said Josua Mata, secretary general of the labor federation Sentro. \u201cBut if this tragedy brings to the national consciousness the unacceptable state to which management and government have reduced our workers and inaugurates an era of reform, then their sacrifice might not be in vain.\u201d\u000aThat remains to be seen. But when it comes to declining workers\u2019 rights, violent labor trafficking, and ethnic cleansing, no one can say the dark underbelly of the \u201ctiger economies\u201d is a secret any longer.\u000aUntil his resignation from the House of Representatives of the Philippines two months ago over differences with the Aquino administration, FPIF columnist Walden Bello chaired the House Committee on Overseas Workers\u2019 Affairs and was one of the principal authors of the Security of Tenure Bill designed to end contractualization. An earlier version of this piece appeared at Telesur English.\u000a
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VLiving Wage Campaign\u000aWhat Fast-Food Workers Are Fighting For\u000aThe New York State Labor Department\u2019s fast food Wage Board this week showed why a pay raise can\u2019t come soon enough for fast food workers.\u000aBy \u000aPrint\u000aDemonstrators rally before a meeting of the wage board in New York, June 15, 2015. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)\u000aThey could have gone on for days, telling their stories about the day-to-day stresses, like choosing between eating and keeping the lights on, taking on a night shift to pay for daycare, or maybe skipping lunch so your kids can eat today. The New York State Labor Department\u2019s fast-food wage board heard many workers on Monday talk about the creative ways they survived on fast food wages in the city, but all of these stories concluded with a simple demand: $15 an hour.\u000aAd Policy\u000aJulia Andino, a 20-year-old single mother with tired eyes, said her job at McDonald\u2019s paid so little, she had to \u201cpick and choose what bills you have to go through.\u201d Her application for public assistance had been rejected, she added, because, she was told, \u201cI was able to pick up a second job if needed. I can\u2019t do it. My son\u2019s only 3\u2026. How are you supposed to get two jobs, go to school, try to pay your bills, but no one\u2019s home, feeding and taking care of your kid? It\u2019s impossible.\u201d\u000aNot long ago, $15 an hour for a \u201cburger-flipping\u201d gig would have sounded impossible too. But now, pressed by a nationwide grassroots labor movement, Governor Andrew Cuomo\u2019s wage board is potentially poised to nearly double the base wage for a fast-food labor force of nearly 165,000 people statewide .\u000aThe hearing at New York University sometimes had the feel of a group therapy session, as workers described their day-to-day misery before the panel\u2014comprised of three appointees representing labor, business, and civil society\u2014and their movement compatriots murmured supportive words from the audience.\u000aUnder crushing financial pressure, some of Julia\u2019s coworkers were prone to anxiety attacks at work she said: \u201cIf you would ask me what I\u2019d do tomorrow, I wouldn\u2019t even tell you, I can\u2019t survive today.\u201d\u000aFollowing a groundbreaking $15 minimum-wage law that just passed in Los Angeles , a pay raise couldn\u2019t come soon enough for New York\u2019s fast-food workers, who earn on average under $16,000 a year . Contrary to stereotypes, most have at least a high school\u2013level education, and more than 85 percent are aged 19 or older.\u000aBack in 2012, the first fast-food-worker activists in New York were ridiculed for demanding a living wage. Now that the call for \u201c15 and a Union\u201d has ricocheted around the world and returned to its home turf, that isn\u2019t just a viable proposal, it seems like low-hanging political fruit: Given the dysfunctional gridlock in Albany, a big wage boost might be seen as a relatively easy populist measure for the Governor, since the wage board lets him bypass the legislature.\u000aLow wages aren\u2019t the whole story, though. Dominos worker Jason Rice told the panel about supporting three generations of his family while juggling two low-wage jobs:\u000aGov. Cuomo\u2019s wage board is potentially poised to nearly double the base wage for nearly 165,000 people statewide.\u000a\u201cOne week you may get eight hours, one week you may get 30. There\u2019s no security, which is why we\u2019re not just fighting for $15 an hour but a union, so we\u2026don\u2019t have to guess every week whether you\u2019re going to be able to pay your bills.\u201d\u000aMost Popular\u000a
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V5 Key Things Pope Francis Says about Climate Change\u000aHere are five key quotes from the encyclical that will shake up the global climate debate.\u000a.\u000aPhoto from: Shutterstock\u000aPope Francis just released an \u201cencyclical,\u201d a fancy word for a sort of intimate letter that is meant to serve as a guide to understanding our personal relationship to some of the most complex issues of the day through religious doctrine. This particular encyclical is on climate change and is addressed not just to the globe\u2019s 1.2 billion Catholics but to everyone of any \u2014 or no \u2014 faith. In it, Pope Francis boldly challenges us all to take an honest look inside our hearts and question the foundations of a society that has created wealth for some at the expense of others and \u201cour common home\u201d \u2013 the planet earth.\u000aHere are five key quotes from the encyclical that will shake up the global climate debate.\u000a#1. Climate change and inequality are inextricably linked.\u000a\u201cToday, however, we have to realize that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.\u201d \u000aIt\u2019s not hard to see how climate change hits people living in poverty first and worst, and inevitably widens the gulf between rich and poor. After extreme weather washes away their homes or drought kills their crops, those living in poverty have a harder time bouncing back than those with savings accounts and sturdier houses. But what\u2019s really radical is how the Pope names inequality itself as an impediment to solving a looming planetary and human rights crisis. The encyclical calls out \u201cmasters of power and money\u201d to stop masking the symptoms and address climate change in service of the common good.\u000a \u000a#2. The global economy must protect the Earth, our common home.\u000a\u201cThe economy accepts every advance in technology with a view to profit, without concern for its potentially negative impact on human beings.\u201d\u000aToday\u2019s global economy profits at the environment\u2019s expense. And the pursuit of growth is fueling environmental degradation, natural disasters, and financial crises. Pope Francis envisions a people-and-planet-first economy more in harmony with the environment that would prevent imbalances of wealth and power and foster peace among nations.\u000a \u000a#3. Everyone must divest from fossil fuels and invest in the future.\u000a\u201cWe know that technology based on the use of highly polluting fossil fuels \u2026  needs to be progressively replaced without delay.\u201d\u000aPope Francis is crystal clear that the current development model based on the intensive use of coal, oil and even natural gas, has to go. In its place we need renewable energy options and new modes of production and consumption that combat global warming. This is precisely what a growing movement of students, faith communities, socially responsible investors and everyday citizens are calling on individuals and private and public institutions to do: Divest their money from fossil fuels and invest it in climate solutions like wind, solar, and energy efficiency.\u000a \u000a#4. It\u2019s time for powerful nations to pay their fair share.\u000a\u201cA true \u2018ecological debt\u2019 exists, particularly between the global north and south \u2026 In different ways, developing countries, where the most important reserves of the biosphere are found, continue to fuel the development of richer countries at the cost of their own present and future.\u201d\u000aCountries in the global North have benefitted from fossil fuel-driven industrialization, while developing countries bear the brunt of the related greenhouse gas emissions. So, while everyone must act to avoid climate disruption, rich countries have a greater responsibility. For starters, they must make rapid, deep cuts in carbon emissions. And they have to keep their promise to finance the cost for poorer countries to build climate resilience and transition renewable energy through the Green Climate Fund .\u000a \u000a#5. There\u2019s no easy way out of this.\u000a\u201cObstructionist attitudes, even on the part of believers, can range from denial of the problem to indifference, nonchalant resignation or blind confidence in technical solutions.\u201d\u000aThere\u2019s only one way to meet the climate challenge: Extinguish the \u201cdig, burn, dump economy.\u201d And markets and technology can\u2019t be relied on to do the job. Gimmicks like trading carbon credits as a financial commodity or burning coal in \u201ccleaner\u201d power plants are distractions from the only real solution: Stop digging up and drilling \u2014 then burning \u2014 oil, gas, and coal.\u000a \u000aPope Francis is calling for solutions to climate change that is rooted in our \u201cdeepest convictions about love, justice, and peace.\u201d His letter to the world illuminates a radical, compassionate path that shows what it truly means to have faith in humanity.\u000aJanet Redman is the director of the Climate Policy Program at the Institute for Policy Studies.\u000a
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VSenators: Read This Before Your Trade Vote\u000aRep. Bonior\u2019s Historic NAFTA Speech Speaks Volumes Today\u000aJune 22, 2015\u000a.\u000aOn November 17, 1993, Rep. David Bonior of Michigan, the Democratic House Whip, made a plea to his colleagues to listen to the voices of working people everywhere and reject the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). His speech failed to prevent passage of a trade deal that tilted the playing field away from workers, the environment, and democracy in favor of the largest globe-trotting corporations. But his words so captured what was at stake that I carried it around in my wallet for a decade until it literally decomposed.\u000aOn Tuesday, the U.S. Senate is scheduled to vote on another deeply flawed proposal to give up their authority to amend the NAFTA-style trade pacts currently being negotiated with nations in Asia and Europe . My Institute for Policy Studies colleague Sarah Anderson , along with Public Citizen , have recently documented a litany of failed promises by the Clinton administration to members of Congress as they rounded up votes to pass NAFTA in 1993. Senators: if the new round of deal-making hasn\u2019t already repulsed you, please read Rep. Bonior\u2019s words before you cast your vote on Tuesday. Undemocratic trade deals, shrouded in secrecy, were bad deals 22 years ago, and they are bad deals today.\u000aExcerpts from Rep. David Bonior\u2019s remarks to Congress before the NAFTA vote on November 17, 1993:\u000aMr. Chairman, we are not alone tonight.\u000aThe working people who stand against this treaty don\u2019t have degrees from Harvard.\u000aThey don\u2019t study economic models.\u000aAnd most of them have never heard of Adam Smith.\u000aBut they know when the deck is stacked against them.\u000aThey know it is not fair to ask American workers to compete against Mexican workers who earn $1 an hour.\u000aThat is not fair trade. That is not free trade.\u000aWe stand here tonight with the people who can\u2019t cut deals when they are a few dollars short.\u000aTo them, NAFTA isn\u2019t some economic theory.\u000aIt\u2019s real life.\u000aWhen jobs are lost, these are the people who have to sell their homes, pull their kids out of school, and look for new work.\u000aThose of us who take these concerns seriously have been called fearmongers, afraid to take risks, with no vision of the future.\u000aThat is an insult to the working families of this country.\u000aThese are the people who show their faith in this country every day.\u000aThey take risks every day that people who make their fortunes in the stock market would never understand.\u000aThey know we live in a global economy\u2026.\u000aBut they also know that the work of America is still done by people who pack a lunch, punch a clock, and pour their heart and soul into every paycheck.\u000aAnd we cannot afford to leave them behind.\u000aTonight, we are their voices. And we must stand with them.\u000aWe stand tonight with autoworkers in the Midwest, who can compete with any worker in the world, but ask: How can we compete if we don\u2019t have jobs?\u000aWe stand with the aerospace workers in California, who have seen jobs leave for Tijuana, and demand to know: why will we pay higher taxes to send our jobs to Mexico?\u000aWe stand tonight with church leaders, who have documented torture, corruption, and human rights abuses in Mexico, and ask us tonight: why does this treaty do nothing to stop that?\u000aWe stand with the workers in the maquiladoras, who hoped that when American companies moved to Mexico, they would have the opportunity to lift their families out of poverty, but instead find themselves mired in a river of toxins and when they try to raise their voices in protest, their own Government silences them.\u000aWe are their voices tonight.\u000aWe are not alone.\u000aFor standing with us in this Chamber tonight are all the Americans who came before us, who had the courage to fight against the odds and against the powers that be for a better future and a better life.\u000aThe men and women who struggled in sweatshops for a dime a day, who one day found the strength to stand up and say enough.\u000aThe farmers who faced drought and depression and foreclosure, who could have thrown it all away but found the courage to say never.\u000aThe farmworkers who saw children struggling 12 hours a day to work our harvests of plenty, who had the courage to stand up and say no more.\u000aThe men and women who crossed the bridge at Selma, who stood firm in the face of dogs, and hoses, and nightsticks. And when they were told that this was not the time to fight for justice responded we shall not be moved.\u000aThose are the people who stand with us tonight.\u000aTheir voices echo throughout this Chamber.\u000aWe must not turn our backs on all they fought for.\u000aWe must not turn our backs on all that was earned through the toil and the tears and the courage of our parents and grandparents.\u000aWe must move forward.\u000aThis vote is about more than money and markets.\u000aIt is about more than tariffs and free trade.\u000aIt is about basic values.\u000aIt is about who we are.\u000aAnd what we stand for as a people.\u000aIt\u2019s about the dignity of work.\u000aIt\u2019s about respect for human rights.\u000aIt\u2019s about democracy.\u000aMr. Chairman, if we don\u2019t stand up for working people in this country, who is going to?\u2026\u000aWe have come too far and sacrificed too much in this country to turn the clock back now.\u000aThis NAFTA is not the best we can do.\u000aWe can do better.\u000a
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VEconomy Analysis/Commentaries\u000aSix Ways TPP Opponents Have Won\u2014Even as Fast Track Advances\u000aCritics of the TPP forged relationship with foreign allies, firmed up union positions, and forced some concessions on the secrecy of the text.\u000aOriginally in YES! Magazine .\u000aPhoto: arindambanerjee / Shutterstock.com\u000aI tried to stay emotionally distanced from this one. It didn\u2019t work. When the White House and Republican leaders got the votes they needed in the Senate to advance \u201cfast track\u201d Trade Promotion Authority on Tuesday, June 23, it was crushing.\u000aAll observers agree that fast track will soon become law, making it easier for President Barack Obama to pass the controversial trade pacts in the works with Pacific Rim nations and the European Union. That will be a serious setback to the movements for the environment, labor rights, and affordable pharmaceuticals, among others.\u000aBut after observing painful trade votes for more than 20 years, this one left me feeling that opponents should be holding their heads higher than ever before as they regroup for the next phase of the fight. Here are a few reasons why:\u000a1. A diverse progressive coalition showed that people power can put up a real fight against big money.\u000aThe votes on fast track could not have been closer. The House vote was a razor-thin 218 to 208, while the Senate\u2019s vote to cutoff debate passed without a single vote to spare.\u000aThe opposition included all the regulars from labor, environmental, faith, immigrant, food safety, and consumer groups. But some newish players also stepped up, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation on Internet access, as well as global health, civil rights, and civil liberties groups.\u000aOne result was more airtime for trade-related concerns that have been largely ignored in the past, including the anti-democratic investment rules and impacts on seafood safety , access to medicines , and climate. These new relationships will pay off in future fights. As Leo W. Gerard, international president of the United Steelworkers, put it, \u201cProgressive forces have new energy from this fight.\u201d\u000a2. The battle exposed deep divisions within the United States, empowering allies in other countries.\u000aU.S. Democratic congressional leaders did not roll over for this vote, so opponents in other countries can now count them on their side. And who knows what will happen when citizens of other countries, who are likely to be hard-hit by these deals, see the final text of the agreement?\u000aThe example of the Free Trade Area of the Americas is instructive here. After 11 years of negotiations, those 34-country talks collapsed in 2005. President George W. Bush had fast-track authority to pass the FTAA, but that turned out not to matter. In the end, Brazil and other South American countries refused to give in to the U.S. corporate-driven agenda.\u000a3. The showdown drove a shift in the discourse.\u000aHouse Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, who in 1993 voted in favor of the North American Free Trade Agreement, rebuffed intense pressure from President Obama to support fast track and called for a \u201c new paradigm \u201d on trade. She called for global engagement that \u201cenables voices from all aspects of the world\u2019s economies to be heard.\u201d\u000aEven former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, another NAFTA promoter, stated that \u201cA reflexive presumption in favor of free trade should not be used to justify further agreements.\u201d There were also signs of growing alliances across political lines, with perhaps the most notable example being a joint op-ed by the libertarian Cato Institute and the progressive Public Citizen.\u000a4. Labor unions made strong vows to punish pro-fast track Democrats.\u000aThe AFL-CIO and other unions froze campaign contributions to members of Congress starting in March to pressure them to vote the right way. In the aftermath of Tuesday\u2019s Senate vote, Communications Workers of America President Chris Shelton said, \u201cfor those who opposed the broadest coalition of Americans ever, we will find and support candidates who will stand with working families. That\u2019s how we\u2019ll take on the corporate Democrats who oppose a working family agenda.\u201d\u000aUnions are a critical source of donations and boots on the ground for electoral campaigns. A strong message that labor support should not be taken for granted could change the dynamic of the party for years to come.\u000a5. The strong opposition to Obama\u2019s trade agenda augurs well for other progressive fights.\u000aThis battle was not just about fast track. It was a reflection of increased concern about inequality and the sense that the rules have been rigged against ordinary Americans in favor of large corporations and the wealthy. We can build on this in future efforts over taxes, budgets, labor rights, and other issues.\u000a6. The demands to see the secret text got some results.\u000aWikiLeaks made public two draft chapters of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, giving ammo to the opposition and making many wonder why we were having to rely on Julian Assange for this information.\u000aWhile the fast-track bill doesn\u2019t do anywhere near enough to respond to secrecy concerns, it does require the executive branch to make public the full text of new trade agreements for 60 days before they are sent to Congress. Then lawmakers need to wait at least another 30 days before voting.\u000aIn the TPP\u2019s case, this could help stretch out the timeline into the heat of election season, when Democrats will be even more sensitive to pressure from their base. As Public Citizen President Robert Weissman noted, \u201cWhen the inexcusable and anti-democratic veil of secrecy surrounding the TPP is finally lifted, and the American people see what is actually in the agreement, they are going to force their representatives in Washington to vote that deal down.\u201d\u000a
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VBy John Kiriakou\u000aI\u2019ve gotten a lot of unwelcome mail from the feds these last few years, like a copy of my indictment for blowing the whistle on the CIA\u2019s torture program. But this latest delivery was something altogether new.\u000aMy jaw dropped as I scanned the form letter from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) informing me of a \u201ccybersecurity incident.\u201d Hackers, reportedly from China, had worked their way into the U.S. government\u2019s computers and stolen personal information related to every single federal employee  who ever filled out an application.\u000aI left government in 2011 after serving two years with OPM, 14 years with the CIA, and two years with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I\u2019m one of millions of government workers, past and present, whose personal data \u2014 including Social Security numbers \u2014 was compromised.\u000aOPM said it would generously pay for 18 months of identity theft insurance. Thanks a lot, Uncle Sam.\u000aI don\u2019t much care if the Chinese know that I\u2019m a former CIA officer. It\u2019s no secret. I published a bestselling book about my years at the CIA. I give interviews in the press and on TV speaking out against torture. I lecture at colleges and universities about ethics in intelligence operations.\u000aBut the information the Chinese stole included my original application to the CIA \u2014 my Standard Form 86. That form included information on my family members, friends, neighbors, and references. That means their information was probably compromised too.\u000aIngrid Richter/Flickr\u000aMultiply these breaches millions of times, and that\u2019s a major snafu.\u000aSo where were our federal law enforcement agencies? Why weren\u2019t they protecting us? I think I can tell you.\u000aWhile the hackers were worming their way into government workers\u2019 personal data, the Justice Department was busy targeting scientist Nancy Black of Monterey, California.\u000aBlack was a marine biologist accused of \u201c interfering with the feeding of a wild animal \u201d \u2014 a felony. She\u2019d allegedly whistled at a whale during a whale watching tour she offered to tourists on her boat. After spending thousands on legal fees, she finally pled guilty to a misdemeanor count of violating the Marine Mammal Act.\u000aShe avoided a possible 27-year prison sentence, but still ended up paying a fine of $12,500.\u000aThe Justice Department was also vigorously prosecuting John Yates, who captained a fishing boat in the Gulf of Mexico. A U.S. fisheries official had told Yates to keep any undersized fish he caught separate from larger fish. Instead, Yates threw the smaller fish back into the water, hoping to avoid a fine .\u000aHis reward? He was charged with a felony count of violating the Sarbanes-Oxley Act \u2014 a federal law written in 2002 to prevent accounting firms from destroying or falsifying documents. Government lawyers twisted that statute to prosecute Yates for throwing fish in the wrong place.\u000aYates fought his case all the way to the Supreme Court. He won , but not before spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money to defend himself. The Justice Department likely spent millions pursuing and then defending the case.\u000aMeanwhile, the Chinese were hacking our systems.\u000aPicking low-hanging fruit like workers who make mistakes or non-violent drug offenders is a favored tactic of the department. It bankrupts the defendants and forces them to take plea deals, even on lousy charges.\u000aIt\u2019s time for the Justice Department to get its act together: Stop targeting hardworking Americans and start protecting the American people.\u000aOtherWords columnist John Kiriakou is an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. He\u2019s a former CIA counterterrorism officer and former senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  OtherWords.org .\u000a
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VPrint\u000aKorean People\u2019s Army soldiers observing South Korea at the DMZ\u000aReunification, for Koreans, has a mythic quality, like the Promised Land or the Holy Grail. Most Koreans dream of reunification, of a time in the future when the North and the South will join together to recreate the Korean whole that existed before division and Japanese colonialism. It\u2019s a lovely idea, but no one has a very good idea of how to achieve it.\u000aThere have been many polls in South Korea about the what, how, and when of reunification. According to the latest Asan poll from January 2015, for instance, interest in reunification remains very high (over 80 percent), though younger people are less interested in the subject and also less interested in paying an additional tax to support reunification.\u000aOur views of North Korean opinion, meanwhile, remain rather patchy. The North Korean government has made any number of official pronouncements. And North Korean defectors have given their opinions, but since they left the country it\u2019s not clear how representative their views are.\u000aBut now we have some new information, thanks to a poll of 100 North Koreans in China conducted last year by researchers from Chosun Ilbo and the Center for Cultural Unification Studies. These North Koreans are not defectors. They are spending some time in China working or visiting relatives, and they plan to return to their country. Since conducting a public opinion poll in North Korea is out of the question, this is the next best thing.\u000aThe views of these 100 North Koreans on the topic of reunification are nothing short of amazing.\u000aIn the aftermath of World War II, the two Koreas looked at the issue of reunification in an identical, if opposite, way. North Korea aspired to unify the peninsula under the banner of \u201cour-style socialism.\u201d South Korea, under Syngman Rhee, harbored hopes of absorbing the North in a similarly military fashion.\u000aThe continued stalemate on the peninsula prompted strongmen Kim Il Sung and Park Chung Hee to explore other methods of achieving reunification. Given the structural similarities of the two countries at that point \u2013 authoritarian politics, state-led economic development, social and cultural conformity \u2013 finding a formula for eventual reunification was not so far-fetched. Indeed, one of the chief sticking points at that time was not ideological but numerical. Because South Korea had a much larger population than North Korea, the two sides could not agree on a political structure that could ensure both equal representation of the two sides and proportional representation of the two populations.\u000aAs North Korea descended into the famine and economic crisis of the 1990s, a different vision of reunification emerged, mainly in the South. Communist states had collapsed throughout Eastern Europe. It seemed that it was just a matter of time before North Korea, too, collapsed. Reunification would therefore happen organically \u2013 not through military action or complicated political negotiations but, rather, when the North Korean regime collapsed and the South simply filled the political vacuum.\u000aThe North Korean system has stubbornly remained in place, and so this latest reunification scenario remains in limbo. Predictions of North Korea\u2019s collapse are still routinely made, but no one is expecting that reunification will take place any time soon.\u000aLet\u2019s return now to the poll of North Koreans. This group of North Koreas is, of course, an unusual cohort. They have had an opportunity to travel outside their country. They\u2019ve presumably had contact with foreigners and foreign ideas. They don\u2019t represent North Korean public opinion as a whole. However, the group is roughly divided between men and half women and is diverse in their age and place of residence in North Korea. Only two of the 100 had college degrees, so they do not represent the North Korean elite.\u000aLike South Koreans, the North Koreans showed a lot of interest in reunification: 95 of them said that it was necessary, largely for economic reasons. An overwhelming number believed that they would personally benefit from reunification.\u000aWhen asked about how they think reunification will take place, only eight of the 100 held to their government\u2019s position that North Korea would control the process. Only seven thought that it would take place when the North Korean regime collapses. On the other hand, 22 respondents expected that South Korea would absorb North Korea. And the vast majority expected that reunification would take place \u201cthrough negotiations between the two Koreas on equal footings after reforms and an opening-up of the North.\u201d\u000aWhen asked about the system that a reunified Korea should adopt, the answers were even more startling. Only 14 opted for North Korean socialism, and 26 chose a compromise between the two systems. On the other hand, 34 respondents preferred the South Korean system and 24 others didn\u2019t care which system the unified country adopts.\u000aNorth Koreans, at least in this segment of the population, clearly revealed that they are not robotically following their government\u2019s propaganda (whatever they might say in public). They show a diversity of opinion, which suggests that they are thinking through things on their own. And yet they converge on a couple of different choices, which suggests that they are also having discussions with others about such questions. They don\u2019t show a great deal of confidence in the longevity of the North Korean system. But equally of importance, many are fundamentally pragmatic and don\u2019t really care what system they have to operate within.\u000aThe two governments are not talking about reunification. They\u2019re barely talking about anything. But people in North Korea are thinking about the subject just as much, if not more, than their compatriots in the South. That these poll respondents are not the intellectual elite of the country is even more startling, for it suggests that the discussions about the relative merits of the two systems are taking place across socio-economic lines in North Korea.\u000aMost importantly, the poll results emphasize the importance of projects that give North Koreans an opportunity to engage with the outside world. Before change can happen in a country, it has to happen in the minds of its citizens. And that\u2019s obviously already taking place in North Korea.\u000aJohn Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus.\u000a
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VEcuador Puts Piketty Into Practice\u000aThis small South American country is taxing wealthy estates and distributing the proceeds directly to workers.\u000aPrint\u000aFew Americans could likely find Ecuador on a map or pick its president, Rafael Correa, out of a lineup. However, Correa recently announced an economic plan that should make us pay closer attention to this small South American nation.\u000aCiting the corrosive impact of excess inherited wealth on democracy, Correa proposed a steeply progressive tax on large inheritances. It\u2019s like an estate tax, but with a twist: Revenue from the plan would be issued as dividends directly to workers, rather than going to the government.\u000aThe number of families paying the tax would be quite low, since just 3 in every 100,000 Ecuadorians receive an inheritance worth more than $50,000. On that $50,000 they\u2019d pay just $350 in taxes, or 0.7 percent. The beneficiaries, on the other hand, include the entire population.\u000aThe plan speaks to a central problem of modern economies. As Thomas Piketty illustrated in his blockbuster Capital in the Twenty-First Century, wealth concentrates at the top when left to its own devices. When that happens, the only effective counterweight is a tax.\u000aSounds like an un-American idea, right? Wrong.\u000aThe American people are deeply concerned about rising wealth inequality, a sentiment that crosses partisan lines as well as age, race, and class. A recent poll by The New York Times and CBS shows that two-thirds of Americans see the gap between the rich and poor getting larger and think wealth should be more evenly distributed.\u000aA majority \u2014 57 percent \u2014 also believe the government should be doing more to address inequality. Nearly 70 percent think taxes should be raised on millionaires.\u000aThese sentiments are not unfounded.\u000aThe richest one tenth of 1 percent of Americans \u2014 that\u2019s about 160,000 families, each with assets over $20 million \u2014 now owns about as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, about 110 million families, combined . That top tenth of a percent has seen its wealth grow 5 percent per year since 1986. In the same time frame, the bottom 90 percent has seen its wealth rise precisely 0 percent.\u000aSince 1916, in an effort to put a check on inherited economic power, the United States has imposed an estate tax on the transfer of immense fortunes. Affecting just the top two tenths of 1 percent of households, only 5,000 households annually, the tax doesn\u2019t impact middle and working class families.\u000aWith inequality on the rise and such overwhelming support for government intervention, one might think Congress would follow Correa\u2019s example of increasing taxes on the wealthy. Unfortunately, our lawmakers are taking the opposite course.\u000aThe 2001 Bush tax cuts drastically reduced the impact of the estate tax, slashing the rate and increasing exemptions. Republicans in the House of Representatives recently doubled down on this effort by voting to fully repeal the tax altogether in April.\u000aIf the Senate follows suit, that would give a massive tax cut exclusively to the ultra wealthy, leading to a spike in federal deficits, the slashing of vital public programs, or both. That speaks volumes about whom supporters of repeal are really working for.\u000aCongress should take a cue from Ecuador, and from the American people, and work to reduce inequality. Expanding, not repealing, the estate tax is a good step in this direction.\u000aJosh Hoxie directs the Project on Opportunity and Taxation at the  Institute for Policy Studies .\u000ahttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/hernando-de-soto/piketty-wrong-third-world_b_6751634.html\u000ahttp://platytera.blogspot.com Christian LeBlanc\u000aGiven that there are about 320 million Americans, how much per capita is raised by the estate tax?\u000aDaniel\u000a1 millon should be considered excess inherited wealth?? 1 M life insurance should considered as inherited?? A 75% of progresive tax should be followed by US Congress?\u000aBeto Ramírez Escobar\u000aLife Insurance is not considered inheritance down here and 1 million down here is worth a lot more than in the US, so I think the article is only suggesting the principle, not the specs.\u000aOswaldo Mesias Villacres\u000aDo you know Mr. Ignorant that because of this misguided idea the Correa government has lost the approval of most people in Ecuador and is on the defensive? Now he has to travel accompanied by a military guard because nobody wants to be more and more taxed.\u000aMejia Hauser\u000aWhat you say it is not true. \u201cMOST\u201d of people agree this idea, just the 2% of population (rich) probably do not agree the taxes over inheritance. More, Correa takes early in the morning his bicycle and go around with 2 or three people together. Have you see once the President of Colombia moving into the city? Or the President of US moving? They have a small army and armored cars!!! Please be real and do not tell funny tales from your imagination\u000a.\u000aOswaldo Mesias Villacres\u000aHowever, Correa did not use military personnel before he came up with this idea. You are Alvarado in disguise, right?\u000aviperstyle007\u000aRidiculous!! So a head of state shouldn\u2019t have security? When Obama visits any place including inside the USA, he has a small army something like 10,000 people.\u000aEdwin Obando Chacon\u000aHow many Alvarados are on internet? Everybody who doesnt think like you, its an \u201cAlvarado\u201d, that make looks you so stupid.\u000aJose\u000aYea, the guy is an idiot. Apparently, the most popular president in the Americas, and the most popular in Ecuador in a hundred years perhaps, only has one supporter online: Alvarado. This is not only demented, but it\u2019s an insult to the intelligence of the majority of Ecuadorians.\u000aJorge Ayala\u000aYou, poor guy, are funny. You see Alvarado everywhere\u000aJose\u000aIt\u2019s more than 2% who don\u2019t like the idea. Polls are clear on this, and I\u2019m sure the government is aware of this from their own polls. That\u2019s why they pulled the legislation. The thing is that people, even if they don\u2019t have estates that would be taxed now, generally have the illusion that some day they might. I\u2019m not sure that this has actually reduced Correa\u2019s popularity to a substantial extent, but there\u2019s clearly a lot of push-back related to it.\u000aFrancisco Alter\u000aReally? Are people going to the streets due to taxes? Have they ever calculated how much taxes represent to their pockets? Or is it just because \u201cI can\u2019t stand Correa and his taxes\u201d? For example, the progressive curve for inheritance tax has the effect that some people will pay less than with the previous proportional inheritance tax. Do the math and figure it out by yourself who is going to be benefitted from the modified tax and who is going to lose. Reason is what people rejecting this and the other proposed taxes need the most.\u000aAndres Martinez\u000aThis is absolutely not true! some middle class has change its position but most ecuadorians still supporting Correa. If he needs more security is because the violence showed by the few opposition!!\u000aOswaldo Mesias Villacres\u000aAlvarado, give me just one example of that violence\u000aByron Espinosa\u000aThe truth is that most of us keep supporting Rafael Correa\u000aand its Government due the good transformation we see in our country. In the\u000apast politicians use to promise many things, but did nothing once they were in\u000acharge. The current government has deliver good results with high quality infrastructure, and new services\u000aavailable to the public, for example: Unemployment is in it\u2019s records\u000alow. The health care has improved\u000awith new equipment, systems and hospitals. New roads everywhere in the country.\u000aNew hydro electric plants that would allow our country to export electricity\u000afor the first time. New modern schools, and universities check out \u201cYachay\u201d. The\u000amodernization of the national police with new equipment and new police\u000astations. New fishing ports in all the cost. New day nurseries in low income areas. A new network of emergency call centers\u000aall over the country. New airports. The Re-equipment of\u000athe Ecuadorian army. The modernization of the civil registration system and construction of new offices. The government has sent thousands of students\u000ato study in the best universities of the world. The list goes on \u2026\u2026\u000aviperstyle007\u000aSo true!! Visit Ecuador and witness the change for yourself! Talk to the people on the ground and they will confirm the truth!\u000aOswaldo Mesias Villacres\u000aAnd the tax bill has been urgently suspended. It was the worst error of Correa. Everybody is furious because of the communist tone of the bill.\u000aOswaldo Mesias Villacres\u000aNo replies from Alvarados about the fact that the bill HAD TO BE suspended\u000aviperstyle007\u000aLook up the word SUSPENDED in the dictionary. It is not the same as TERMINATED!! The mainstream media has been on a vigorous campaign to misinform regarding the basis of these new laws. Against such power of misinformation the government needed to setup an information campaign so that the public understood the fundamentals of the laws. Who owns the media outlets, the 2%, what a surprise!\u000aOswaldo Mesias Villacres\u000aNo replies on the fact that the bill HAD TO BE SUSPENDED because people by the thousands rejected it\u000aVictor M Abad\u000aTHE BILL WAS SUSPENDED BECAUSE THE VISIT OF THE POPE ,WICH, WE DON\u2019T NEED, BUT THE IGNORANT POLITICIAN CORRUPT AS NEBOT AND RODAS ARE, WISH TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF. I SEE YOU ARE ONE OF THOSE THAT THINK OPPOSING CORREA IS ALL THAT COUNTS, NO MATTER WHAT IS GOING AGAINST YOUR OWN COUNTRY. ARE YOU BEING PAID FOR TEXACO?\u000aFrancisco Alter\u000aFalse. The law project was not suspended. It was temporarily filed. People need time to realize the real economic effect it has. People need to do the math and see how much the proposed taxes are going to cost to them and see the truth. Do you know that the progressive inheritance tax has the effect that some people will even pay less than with the current inheritance tax? Do the Math! Stop lying and misinforming people!\u000aOswaldo Mesias Villacres\u000aI suspect this article was paid for by Correa. He is used to pay people in international magazines to appear as an important leader.\u000aPedro Moreno\u000aMan Oswaldo Mesias Villacres you tell it how it is, not to mention that now at days your average house is over $50,000, this is more than 3% which here it is claimed to be 2% and on some political commercials it is only the 1% can\u2019t even get that right and not to mention the fact that if you cant afford to pay for the tax the Governments takes the assets sells it and hands over your change but now you are left without the house your family worked so hard to get, to feed a bunch of no good people unwilling to work or make a change. Freeloaders find this ok, hard workers call this plain ol robbery. We the Ecuadorian people do not accept this idea and that is why he has stopped the movement he had to get this approved, such is the case of Yassuni ITT turned arround and bit him in the but.\u000aOswaldo Mesias Villacres\u000aHe paid lots of Hollywood stars hundreds of thousands of dollars each to get their \u201csupport\u201d. No wonder if it is the same case with this author.\u000aAntonio Alvarez\u000aSorry Oswaldo, but what you are saying is completely false. Hollywood Stars like Robert De Niro weren\u2019t paid at all when taking a photo with the president. This was just a rumor that started from opposition leaders that could never give any evidence which lead to the government and De Niro himself to deny it.\u000aStop all these nonsense and accept that Ecuador has an inequality issue that needs to be properly address with the intervention of the government.\u000aOswaldo Mesias Villacres\u000aThey were paid through McSuaqer and you know that Alvarado\u000aEdwin Obando Chacon\u000aDo you have any proof? Nebot puppet.\u000aJorge Ayala\u000aTroll detected\u000aviperstyle007\u000aAverage house where?? In the suburbs of Quito and Guayaquil. And even still if your children inherit it and live in the home, they pay nothing. Just the mere mention of Yasuni relating this issue shows that you are biased. Inform yourself and stop spreading lies!! Hoping that your even Ecuadorean and not another troll!\u000aPedro Moreno\u000aTypical freeloader alert, I work my but off to buy a house that is worth and even in Mapasingue Oeste, La Beata, Gomez Rendon just to name a few places I went to look houses were at a time high lowest cheapest house my wife and I found was $48.000 shows you who the real borregos/ freeloaders are the ones that say stuf and are not informed, the ones that want to live of the money I work hard to get and provide for my family with a teachers salary so yeah I have done my research and I do know what I speak. Do some reaserch young blood then come talk at the big peoples table.\u000aviperstyle007\u000aTypical ignorance alert, for you Americans its like saying in New York City the prices are all high, anywhere you look they are high. But what genius doesn\u2019t tell you is that New York City is not the \u201caverage\u201d of the country.The minute you leave the urban developed areas you are drenched in low cost or in the Ecuadorean case in point you see extreme poverty and misery!\u000aviperstyle007\u000aYou see this is the problem with people from and who live in Guayaquil, when they speak about issues in the country they only think about themselves and their city, no one else counts or matters. There so called city of pearly gates which is really a crap hole of filth is built on the backs of impoverished people who immigrated to the city during very difficult economic times. They don\u2019t understand that there concrete jungle that they so defend and there corrupt mayor that they love to blow is all thanks to the farmers and poor that they hate so much!\u000aPedro Moreno\u000aLoad of Bull you speak you talking to a member of a family that comes from Riobamba, that comes from Portoviejo my family comes from outside of Guayaquil so we better than most know what we talk about, even my family is against idiots that speak out about things they know nothing about. Get educated my friend then talk the big talk but with facts not lulubies told to you by someone else and you just repeat like a little taperecorder\u000aviperstyle007\u000aWhich means you are the worst of your kind, the typical mover to Guayaquil that all of a sudden thinks he is part of some high class community. When you left Portoviejo on your way to Guayaquil you forgot about Chone, Jipijapa, Pedro Carbo and all those similar towns that represent the 80% of the territory where the poverty and lack of basic services is sickening. Where were the $50,000 homes??? Tape recorder you say? How about you finally met with intelligence, integrity and real pride for our Country! People like me, look at people like you, and see examples of real poor human beings!\u000aPedro Moreno\u000aYou that is me someone with vision, someone with the desire to be more than just average than just waiting to receive and receive from the labor of other unlike you and your kind the freeloaders the scum of the earth that have no desire to strive to be bigger, to get better, I am proud to be that one. If you can\u2019t make it, then you are just another loser with out a vision and hide behind other people, and wait in line to get what other people have worked so hard to get, I feel so sorry for you, for your mom to have given birth to a low life loser\u000aEdwin Obando Chacon\u000aWow, so run out of arguments, and then you insult viperstyle and his mother. Who needs to be educated? Dont play hard worker, you are such an hypocrite\u000aPedro Moreno\u000aYou merit no reply. This is out of your league I can´t blame you though.\u000aviperstyle007\u000aCannot agree with you more Edwin! But that\u2019s the reality of Ecuadorean society, bunch of ingrates limited in ideas and depth!\u000aviperstyle007\u000aEither your a troll, ignorant, a hater or all of the above! This is completely not true, it is easy to see that any private media, especially the large conglomerates, in any part of the world are always slamming progressive Latin american leaders. Especially Correa since he is the only one that speaks out on the issue.\u000aEdwin Obando Chacon\u000aBecause people who have opinions which are like Correa ones, are just being paid, right?\u000aNebot has more money to do that, he surely can pay to the CNN. Pretty sure you didnt read the article, just trying to troll, a pathetic intend I can say.\u000aJose\u000aThere\u2019s a lot of propaganda about Ecuador in the international press, no question, but it\u2019s typically designed to undermine Correa, given that he\u2019s an outsider of the international establishment.\u000aJorge Ayala\u000aTroll detected!\u000aErnesto\u000aLive in Ecuador and see the real and big changes that have happended in the country since Correa is the Presidente, then you would give your vote for him, he is great!\u000aOswaldo Mesias Villacres\u000aIf he is so great ask him to have a child together.\u000aEdwin Obando Chacon\u000aTalking about haters. Sure you getting paid for comment quantity, so you have to troll every comment on internet.\u000aBeto Ramírez Escobar\u000aNice one! Insults! I´m blinded by just how bright you are!\u000aviperstyle007\u000aThank you for being honest! Only a hater can talk otherwise!! The change in Ecuador has been amazing!!\u000aMinisterio Apostólico Internac\u000aThis article is absolutely right, just one thing, while in US the most of population would support Washington in case they would produce a bill like this, in Ecuador, thousands will riot on the streets against the government. But sadly, it doesn\u2019t mean there are thousands of rich in the small and so beautiful country, but thousands of ignorant, full of hatred, corrupts and selfish humans that will support the same people that sank Ecuador in 1999, stealing around US $9 Billions. Do the conclusions\u2026..\u000aOswaldo Mesias Villacres\u000aThanks for calling thousands of people corrupt. Again, you are Alvarado in disguise, right?\u000aBeto Ramírez Escobar\u000aDid you even read the article? Are you sure you guys are millions? Last time I checked it was only a 2% and a few thousand idiots rioting to defend a wealth is not even theirs, because they think that, without the rich they will not have jobs or how to feed their families. And no, I´m not Alvarado, I´m not in disguise, I´m not a sheep, as you like to call someone with some sort of a memory down here, I´m the son of a teacher, who used to wait 4 months for a monthly payement, who had to work two or three jobs in order to make ends meet, because the public school system was kidnapped by a corrupt leftist political party, and what did the guys in power at the time do? Nothing! And that´s just one of the many things that were wrong at the time. I´m not saying that everyone should think the same or support the government, but the riots down here these days are full of the same obscure characters that have been sinking the country since I can remember, like vultures flying over, waiting for us to die. We are not buying your crap anymore, only a few thousand idiots will be on your sad parades! Because that´s what they are! Most of us don´t forget and will not support the crooks that are trying to get back on top at any price!\u000aOswaldo Mesias Villacres\u000ahttp://www.tvdeecuador.com/teleamazonas-en-vivo-ecuador-gratis-online-24-horas/\u000aMatMark\u000aMaybe that\u2019s just a good made up background for a hired troll (yes Correa\u2019s party hires a lot of them). Anyway it wasnt very apostolic of you calling thousands people you dont even know corrupt. It is clear,at least to anyone who is not biased, that the riots are not only against this tax. This people just had enough of the corruption and lies from a goverment that nevers aks and never listens. Or is it normal to you that the president changed the constitution (without asking anyone) in order to be president for an unlimited time?\u000aJuan David\u000aYou may not see it, but it is true that in Ecuador exist thousands of corrupt people, maybe not cause they want to be bad, but cause their ignorance, do you think that Nebot is corrupt? well, he was missing taxes, using his position as governor to fade the reality. That way most Ecuatorians think it is not big deal what they are doing, but it is indeed corruption. Sorry if i made a mistake in my writting i\u2019m new on english\u000aJose\u000aAgreed. Corruption is pervasive in Ecuador, and a lot of the people who complain about corruption happily participate in it. For example, it\u2019s very common to bribe cops. That\u2019s corruption, and something should be done about it at a very fundamental level. Nebot\u2019s taxes are a clear example of what corruption is, which BTW, the \u201cfree\u201d and \u201cindependent\u201d press in Ecuador has forgotten to report.\u000aalex\u000alife insurance is not considered inheritance. the 98%will not pay more in inheritance taxes than before. the raise in taxes is only for the 2% at the top and more agressively to the o.1%\u000awanna try with somer real numbers\u2026 here it is,\u000ahttp://www.sri.gob.ec/web/guest/calculadora-herencias\u000aAndres Martinez\u000aAlthough is true that the conservative parties, all of them financed by the richest 1%, have won support by a part of the middle class, the majority of population is still strongly supporting Correa. It is neccessary a better discution but there is no doubt that this kind of policy is neccessary for our people and to change the unfair outputs of our economies.\u000aOswaldo Mesias Villacres\u000aFernando Alvarado, are you there?\u000aJorge Ayala\u000aMan, you are sick!. You see Fernando Alvarado everywhere!\u000aBeto Ramírez Escobar\u000aNo he´s not, it´s me again! No disguise, no sandwich, never been in one of Correa´s meetings, I´m not a member of his political movement, nothing! Just a citizen with a memory and a little common sense. I think YOU have some hidden agenda.\u000aJose\u000aYes, Correa is still very popular, but no one likes tax hikes. The government evidently looked at polls and decided to pull the legislation, pending a debate and possibly a referendum.\u000aOswaldo Mesias Villacres\u000aHas anybody mentioned how deep in debt is Ecuador now? What about cocaine sent through the diplomatic courier to Italy? What about a President\u2019s cousin lying about his lack of an Economics degree while acting as President of the Central Bank? What about allowing FARC troops in Ecuadorian soil? And the list goes on and on\u000aviperstyle007\u000aThe USA borrows $1 Million a minute from China, and no one is concerned. Ecuador sells oil to China, and invites Chinese investment and that is called debt. Cocaine shipments!? Someone lied about a degree!? FARC troops running around the jungle for 50 years!? These are the arguments of a sad opposition that needs to dig deep into garbage pile to find any scraps to feed on. Even after all these rumors were spread by the media, Correa still has 70% approval and squashed everyone in the last elections. Which means no one believes this crap!\u000aEdwin Obando Chacon\u000aNow, its officially you are a troll, but not any troll, a paid troll.\u000aJose\u000aOK, how deep in Ecuador\u2019s debt? Let\u2019s see the figures, and let\u2019s compare to other countries.\u000aYour other points (except the last one which is made up) involve cases that have been investigated and solved by the relevant authorities, aren\u2019t they? What they are supposed to prove about the Ecuadorian government is beyond me.\u000aOswaldo Mesias Villacres\u000ahttps://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152852154302105&set=gm.664874816979468&type=1\u000aAle Borja\u000aEsto es una basura el gobierno de correa es corrupto como ningun otro , el se cree dictador y esta llevando al pais a la miseria , estupidos si no saben como se vive aca no publiiquen pendejadas.\u000aByron Espinosa\u000aNo hay necesidad de insultar. Lamentablemente en la oposición hay personas con la misma agresividad y ignorancia.\u000aviperstyle007\u000aThe same ignorant statement from a typical ignorant Ecuadorean. The funny thing is that when they leave there tiny 10 square foot world and visit other countries like the US and Europe they realize how ignorant they really are. People like this are real racists because they don\u2019t only discriminate against color, but also social status!!\u000aEdwin Obando Chacon\u000aJAJA, tipico comentario salido del higado de una anticomunista transnochada. Usted no vive en Ecuador tampoco, tendra presencia fisica pero vive en su propia burbujita, aislada de la realidad.\u000ajuan diego troya\u000aI agree with distribution of wealth that they have much to pay many that the country is to live Ecuador\u000aJonathan Fabricio\u000aOswaldo Mesias Villacres, seems like you are a troll center because you have answered all comments saying Alvarado, Alvarado, Alvarado, you should contact to Alvarado and maybe meet him for come down your desire to see him everywhere.. if you are going to answer my comment please answer how this inheritance tax is going to damage the ecuadorians poor families.\u000aEdwin Obando Chacon\u000aHe loves Alvarado, some kind of mens love which he is trying to hide behind those troll comments.\u000aAndrea Moya\u000aThis article starts from a false premise: \u201cRevenue from the plan would be issued as dividends directly to workers, rather than going to the government.\u201d This is incorrect.\u000aFrancisco Alter\u000a\u201cRevenue from the plan would be issued as dividends directly to workers, rather than going to the government.\u201d This is not precise, but it is not false. Here is the fact: instead of paying the inheritance tax to goverment, employers have the option to give shares to their workers, making them part of the enterprise ownership. So, this is the law spirit: to redistribute the wealth, not to enrich the government.\u000aEcuadorean citizen\u000aAgree but not that much!\u2026 Why give those taxes to workers? Sometimes (actually must of the time) the owners are the ones that go at 5am to work and go back at 10 or 11pm giving the best to build their company, while most of the time the workers don\u2019t care and don\u2019t do it.\u000aNow, this new economic plan doesn\u2019t affect just the 2% of ecuadoreans, it affects to more people that are not rich and not poor either.\u000aOscar Malgiaritta\u000aDo you live in Ecuador?? I\u2019m not sure! Here the employees work from 5am to 11 pm and the owners don\u2019t\u2026 That\u2019s the problem!\u000aJorge A.\u000aThe truth of the matter is that Ecuador already has a decent inheritance taxes. The problem lies not in the fact that there is a new tax, but the rhetoric used by the president and the increasing amount of proof of nepotism and corruption during his administration. Yes, he upgraded the infrastructure but the fact remains that during his presidency the size of the government has grown exponentially which is really bad in economic terms, growth of employment due to govt increment in size puts the budget on the red,it forces the govt to pay new employees and takes away from future employees to the private sector; therefore, those payrolls don\u2019t benefit the growth of the economy. The president has insulted people, has trampled on the civil liberties of any who opposes him, and the people are getting tired. During his administration the price of oil was through the roof and instead of creating a reserve fund, the money was spent \u201ca diestra y si niestra.\u201d The president has created a class war among Ecuadorians half of the people are mad at those who \u201chave\u201d solely because they \u201chave.\u201d Instead of being upset at the economic factors and lack of opportunities created by the government itself; beautiful distraction btw. During his administration having success its a symbol of evil and only those whom he approves can succeed. It is obvious that he hates the \u201cold\u201d rich, but it is hard to turn a blind eye at the fact that he has become increasingly rich since he took office, it is hard to ignore the fact that his sister (i believe) doesn\u2019t pay taxes since correa took office, or the fact that a single member of the cabinet has 125 advisors. That is why correa has to go, he probably had good intentions, but he has become a dictator and a corrupt one, just like Mahuad, Bucaram, and all the others.\u000aJose\u000aYou would have a point if you actually had data to demonstrate what you\u2019re saying. What\u2019s Ecuador\u2019s debt? 30% of GDP \u2014 ie. nothing compared to most countries right now. You claim there\u2019s corruption. Of course, but more than in the past? Let\u2019s see an analysis. Indeed, it seems to me that cases of corruption discovered these days get prosecuted. There\u2019s no evidence to support any innuendo beyond that. And just so you know, the \u201cclass war\u201d that exists is a worldwide phenomenon, and it gets worse because wealth keeps getting transferred from the poor to the rich. It\u2019s not something that Correa magically brought into existence.\u000aviperstyle007\u000aTruth??!! if the existing taxes on inheritances were good then there would be less inequality. The new laws proposed are essential to close the gap between poor and rich in order to give birth to a real middle class. Corruption? A term used loosely without real facts is corruption. Not only did he upgrade the country, he accomplished what all the presidencies of years past put together were unable to achieve. In order for the country to prosper the government needed to step in to upgrade the quality of life for its citizens, something that the private sector never did and has no plans to do. Taxes are used for investment in projects, education and infrastructure are called waste by the 2% you defend. How could you create a reserve or savings fund when the needs on the ground of the 85% of citizens is critical? What good is putting money in the bank while you have kids begging on the street? Is it to bail the banks out after they stole citizens deposited money like they did in 1999? The 2% call it a class war when their wallet needs to pay a little more to help their fellow citizens. Because there are only two classes in Ecuador; super rich and super poor. A manager of a retail store anywhere in America makes more money than the President of Ecuador, and they say he\u2019s getting rich! Mind you these are the claims of the same people who cried over import taxes on luxury goods, who swore they were going broke and then all of a sudden were recipients of huge wealthy inheritances. Correa is an example to the world, noted by many honest people around the globe. With the support of the majority of Ecuadoreans that have 10 times defeated your kind at the ballot box and it will continue!! Welcome to the minority!!\u000aOswaldo Mesias Villacres\u000a
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V(Photo: Alex Alvisi / Flickr)\u000aThere\u2019s something fundamentally wrong with U.S. foreign policy.\u000aDespite glimmers of hope \u2014 a tentative nuclear agreement with Iran, for one, and a long-overdue thaw with Cuba \u2014 we\u2019re locked into seemingly irresolvable conflicts in most regions of the world. They range from tensions with nuclear-armed powers like Russia and China to actual combat operations in the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa.\u000aWhy? Has a state of perpetual warfare and conflict become inescapable? Or are we in a self-replicating cycle that reflects an inability \u2014 or unwillingness \u2014 to see the world as it actually is?\u000aThe United States is undergoing a historic transition in our relationship to the rest of the world, but this is neither acknowledged nor reflected in U.S. foreign policy. We still act as if our enormous military power, imperial alliances, and self-perceived moral superiority empower us to set the terms of \u201cworld order.\u201d\u000aWhile this illusion goes back to the end of World War II, it was the end of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union that signaled the beginning of a self-proclaimed \u201cAmerican Century.\u201d The idea that the United States had \u201cwon\u201d the Cold War and now \u2014 as the world\u2019s lone superpower \u2014 had the right or responsibility to order the world\u2019s affairs led to a series of military adventures. It started with President Bill Clinton\u2019s intervention in the Yugoslav civil war, continued on with George W. Bush\u2019s disastrous invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and can still be seen in the Obama administration\u2019s own misadventures in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and beyond.\u000aIn each case, Washington chose war as the answer to enormously complex issues, ignoring the profound consequences for both foreign and domestic policy. Yet the world is very different from the assumptions that drive this impulsive interventionism.\u000aIt\u2019s this disconnect that defines the current crisis.\u000aAcknowledging New Realities\u000aSo what is it about the world that requires a change in our outlook? A few observations come to mind.\u000aFirst, our preoccupation with conflicts in the Middle East \u2014 and to a significant extent, our tensions with Russia in Eastern Europe and with China in East Asia \u2014 distract us from the most compelling crises that threaten the future of humanity. Climate change and environmental perils have to be dealt with now and demand an unprecedented level of international collective action. That also holds for the resurgent danger of nuclear war.\u000aSecond, superpower military interventionism and far-flung acts of war have only intensified conflict, terror, and human suffering. There\u2019s no short-term solution \u2014 especially by force \u2014 to the deep-seated problems that cause chaos, violence, and misery through much of the world.\u000aThird, while any hope of curbing violence and mitigating the most urgent problems depends on international cooperation, old and disastrous intrigues over spheres of influence dominate the behavior of the major powers. Our own relentless pursuit of military advantage on every continent, including through alliances and proxies like NATO, divides the world into \u201cfriend\u201d and \u201cfoe\u201d according to our perceived interests. That inevitably inflames aggressive imperial rivalries and overrides common interests in the 21st century.\u000aFourth, while the United States remains a great economic power, economic and political influence is shifting and giving rise to national and regional centers no longer controlled by U.S.-dominated global financial structures. Away from Washington, London, and Berlin, alternative centers of economic power are taking hold in Beijing, New Delhi, Cape Town, and Brasilia. Independent formations and alliances are springing up: organizations like the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa); the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (representing 2.8 billion people); the Union of South American Nations; the Latin American trade bloc, Mercosur; and others.\u000aBeyond the problems our delusions of grandeur have caused in the wider world, there are enormous domestic consequences of prolonged war and interventionism. We shell out over $1 trillion a year in military-related expenses even as our social safety net frays and our infrastructure crumbles . Democracy itself has become virtually dysfunctional.\u000a(Photo: U.S. Army / Flickr)\u000aShort Memories and Persistent Delusions\u000aBut instead of letting these changing circumstances and our repeated military failures give us pause, our government continues to act as if the United States has the power to dominate and dictate to the rest of the world.\u000aThe responsibility of those who set us on this course fades into background. Indeed, in light of the ongoing meltdown in the Middle East, leading presidential candidates are tapping neoconservatives like John Bolton and Paul Wolfowitz \u2014 who still think the answer to any foreign policy quandary is military power \u2014 for advice. Our leaders seem to forget that following this lot\u2019s advice was exactly what caused the meltdown in the first place. War still excites them, risks and consequences be damned.\u000aWhile the Obama administration has sought, with limited success, to end the major wars it inherited, our government makes wide use of killer drones in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, and has put troops back into Iraq to confront the religious fanaticism and brutality of the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) \u2014 itself a direct consequence of the last U.S. invasion of Iraq. Reluctant to find common ground in the fight against ISIS with designated \u201cfoes\u201d like Iran and Syria, Washington clings to allies like Saudi Arabia, whose leaders are fueling the crisis of religious fanaticism and internecine barbarity. Elsewhere, the U.S. also continues to give massive support to the Israeli government, despite its expanding occupation of the West Bank and its horrific recurring assaults on Gaza.\u000aA \u201cwar first\u201d policy in places like Iran and Syria is being strongly pushed by neoconservatives like former Vice President Dick Cheney and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain . Though it\u2019s attempted to distance itself from the neocons, the Obama administration adds to tensions with planned military realignments like the \u201c Asia pivot \u201d aimed at building up U.S. military forces in Asia to confront China. It\u2019s also taken a more aggressive position than even other NATO partners in fostering a new cold war with Russia.\u000aWe seem to have missed the point: There is no such thing as an \u201cAmerican Century.\u201d International order cannot be enforced by a superpower alone. But never mind centuries \u2014 if we don\u2019t learn to take our common interests more seriously than those that divide nations and breed the chronic danger of war, there may well be no tomorrows.\u000aUnexceptionalism\u000aThere\u2019s a powerful ideological delusion that any movement seeking to change U.S. foreign policy must confront: that U.S. culture is superior to anything else on the planet. Generally going by the name of \u201cAmerican exceptionalism,\u201d it\u2019s the deeply held belief that American politics (and medicine, technology, education, and so on) are better than those in other countries. Implicit in the belief is an evangelical urge to impose American ways of doing things on the rest of the world.\u000aAmericans, for instance, believe they have the best education system in the world, when in fact they\u2019ve dropped from 1st place to 14th place in the number of college graduates. We\u2019ve made students of higher education the most indebted section of our population, while falling to 17th place in international education ratings. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation, the average American pays more than twice as much for his or her education than those in the rest of the world.\u000aHealth care is an equally compelling example. In the World Health Organization\u2019s ranking of health care systems in 2000, the United States was ranked 37th. In a more recent Institute of Medicine report in 2013, the U.S. was ranked the lowest among 17 developed nations studied.\u000aThe old anti-war slogan, \u201cIt will be a good day when schools get all the money they need and the Navy has to hold a bake sale to buy an aircraft carrier\u201d is as appropriate today as it was in the 1960s. We prioritize corporate subsidies, tax cuts for the wealthy, and massive military budgets over education. The result is that Americans are no longer among the most educated in the world.\u000aBut challenging the \u201cexceptionalism\u201d myth courts the danger of being labeled \u201cunpatriotic\u201d and \u201cun-American,\u201d two powerful ideological sanctions that can effectively silence critical or questioning voices.\u000aThe fact that Americans consider their culture or ideology \u201csuperior\u201d is hardly unique. But no other country in the world has the same level of economic and military power to enforce its worldview on others.\u000aThe United States did not simply support Kosovo\u2019s independence, for example. It bombed Serbia into de facto acceptance. When the U.S. decided to remove the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, and Muammar Gaddafi from power, it just did so. No other country is capable of projecting that kind of force in regions thousands of miles from its borders.\u000aThe U.S. currently accounts for anywhere from 45 to 50 percent of the world\u2019s military spending. It has hundreds of overseas bases, ranging from huge sprawling affairs like Camp Bond Steel in Kosovo and unsinkable aircraft carriers around the islands of Okinawa, Wake, Diego Garcia, and Guam to tiny bases called \u201c lily pads \u201d of pre-positioned military supplies. The late political scientist Chalmers Johnson estimated that the U.S. has some 800 bases worldwide, about the same as the British Empire had at its height in 1895.\u000aThe United States has long relied on a military arrow in its diplomatic quiver, and Americans have been at war almost continuously since the end of World War II. Some of these wars were major undertakings: Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq (twice), Libya. Some were quick \u201csmash and grabs\u201d like Panama and Grenada. Others are \u201cshadow wars\u201d waged by Special Forces, armed drones, and local proxies. If one defines the term \u201cwar\u201d as the application of organized violence, the U.S. has engaged in close to 80 wars since 1945.\u000a(Photo: Dennis Dimick / Flickr)\u000aThe Home Front\u000aThe coin of empire comes dear, as the old expression goes.\u000aAccording Harvard University\u2019s Kennedy School of Government, the final butcher bill for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars \u2014 including the long-term health problems of veterans \u2014 will cost U.S. taxpayers around $6 trillion . One can add to that the over $1 trillion the U.S. spends each year on defense-related items. The \u201cofficial\u201d defense budget of some half a trillion dollars doesn\u2019t include such items as nuclear weapons, veterans\u2019 benefits or retirement, the CIA and Homeland Security, nor the billions a year in interest we\u2019ll be paying on the debt from the Afghan-Iraq wars. By 2013 the U.S. had already paid out $316 billion in interest.\u000aThe domestic collateral damage from that set of priorities is numbing.\u000aWe spend more on our \u201cofficial\u201d military budget than we do on Medicare, Medicaid, Health and Human Services, Education, and Housing and Urban Development combined. Since 9/11, we\u2019ve spent $70 million an hour on \u201csecurity\u201d compared to $62 million an hour on all domestic programs.\u000aAs military expenditures dwarf funding for deteriorating social programs, they drive economic inequality. The poor and working millions are left further and further behind. Meanwhile the chronic problems highlighted at Ferguson, and reflected nationwide, are a horrific reminder of how deeply racism \u2014 the unequal economic and social divide and systemic abuse of black and Latino youth \u2014 continues to plague our homeland .\u000aThe state of ceaseless war has deeply damaged our democracy, bringing our surveillance and security state to levels that many dictators would envy. The Senate torture report , most of it still classified, shatters the trust we are asked to place in the secret, unaccountable apparatus that runs the most extensive Big Brother spy system ever devised.\u000aBombs and Business\u000aPresident Calvin Coolidge was said to have remarked that \u201cthe business of America is business.\u201d Unsurprisingly, U.S. corporate interests play a major role in American foreign policy.\u000aOut of the top 10 international arms producers, eight are American. The arms industry spends millions lobbying Congress and state legislatures, and it defends its turf with an efficiency and vigor that its products don\u2019t always emulate on the battlefield. The F-35 fighter-bomber, for example \u2014 the most expensive weapons system in U.S. history \u2014 will cost $1.5 trillion and doesn\u2019t work. It\u2019s over budget, dangerous to fly, and riddled with defects. And yet few lawmakers dare challenge the powerful corporations who have shoved this lemon down our throats.\u000aCorporate interests are woven into the fabric of long-term U.S. strategic interests and goals. Both combine to try to control energy supplies, command strategic choke points through which oil and gas supplies transit, and ensure access to markets.\u000aMany of these goals can be achieved with standard diplomacy or economic pressure, but the U.S. always reserves the right to use military force. The 1979 \u201c Carter Doctrine \u201d \u2014 a document that mirrors the 1823 Monroe Doctrine about American interests in Latin America \u2014 put that strategy in blunt terms vis-à-vis the Middle East: \u201cAn attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.\u201d\u000aIt\u2019s no less true in East Asia. The U.S. will certainly engage in peaceful economic competition with China. But if push comes to shove, the Third, Fifth, and Seventh fleets will back up the interests of Washington and its allies \u2014 Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Australia.\u000aTrying to change the course of American foreign policy is not only essential for reducing international tensions. It\u2019s critically important to shift the enormous wealth we expend in war and weapons toward alleviating growing inequality and social crises at home.\u000a­\u000aAs long as competition for markets and accumulation of capital characterize modern society, nations will vie for spheres of influence, and antagonistic interests will be a fundamental feature of international relations. Chauvinist reaction to incursions real or imagined \u2014 and the impulse to respond by military means \u2014 is characteristic to some degree of every significant nation-state. Yet the more that some governments, including our own, become subordinate to oligarchic control, the greater is the peril.\u000a(Photo: Caelie_Frampton/Flickr)\u000aFinding the Common Interest\u000aThese, however, are not the only factors that will shape the future.\u000aThere is nothing inevitable that rules out a significant change of direction, even if the demise or transformation of a capitalistic system of greed and exploitation is not at hand. The potential for change, especially in U.S. foreign policy, resides in how social movements here and abroad respond to the undeniable reality of: 1) the chronic failure, massive costs, and danger inherent in \u201cAmerican Century\u201d exceptionalism; and 2) the urgency of international efforts to respond to climate change.\u000aThere is, as well, the necessity to respond to health and natural disasters aggravated by poverty, to rising messianic violence, and above all, to prevent a descent into war. This includes not only the danger of a clash between the major nuclear powers, but between regional powers. A nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India, for example, would affect the whole world.\u000aWithout underestimating the self-interest of forces that thrive on gambling with the future of humanity, historic experience and current reality elevate a powerful common interest in peace and survival. The need to change course is not something that can be recognized on only one side of an ideological divide. Nor does that recognition depend on national, ethnic, or religious identity. Rather, it demands acknowledging the enormous cost of plunging ahead as everything falls apart around us.\u000aAfter the latest U.S. midterm elections, the political outlook is certainly bleak. But experience shows that elections, important as they are, are not necessarily indicators of when and how significant change can come about in matters of policy. On issues of civil rights and social equality, advances have occurred because a dedicated and persistent minority movement helped change public opinion in a way the political establishment could not defy.\u000aThe Vietnam War, for example, came to an end, despite the stubbornness of Democratic and Republican administrations, when a stalemate on the battlefield and growing international and domestic opposition could no longer be denied. Significant changes can come about even as the basic character of society is retained. Massive resistance and rejection of colonialism caused the British Empire and other colonial powers to adjust to a new reality after World War II. McCarthyism was eventually defeated in the United States. President Nixon was forced to resign. The use of landmines and cluster bombs has been greatly restricted because of the opposition of a small band of activists whose initial efforts were labeled \u201cquixotic.\u201d\u000aThere are diverse and growing political currents in our country that see the folly and danger of the course we\u2019re on. Many Republicans, Democrats, independents, and libertarians \u2014 and much of the public \u2014 are beginning to say \u201cenough\u201d to war and military intervention all over the globe, and the folly of basing foreign policy on dividing countries into \u201cfriend or foe.\u201d\u000aThis is not to be Pollyannaish about anti-war sentiment, or how quickly people can be stampeded into supporting the use of force. In early 2014, some 57 percent of Americans agreed that \u201cover-reliance on military force creates more hatred leading to increased terrorism.\u201d Only 37 percent believed military force was the way to go. But once the hysteria around the Islamic State began, those numbers shifted to pretty much an even split: 47 percent supported the use of military force, 46 percent opposed it.\u000aIt will always be necessary in each new crisis to counter those who mislead and browbeat the public into acceptance of another military intervention. But in spite of the current hysterics about ISIS, disillusionment in war as an answer is probably greater now among Americans and worldwide than it has ever been. That sentiment may prove strong enough to produce a shift away from perpetual war, a shift toward some modesty and common-sense realism in U.S. foreign policy.\u000aMaking Space for the Unexpected\u000aGiven that there is a need for a new approach, how can American foreign policy be changed?\u000aForemost, there is the need for a real debate on the thrust of a U.S. foreign policy that chooses negotiation, diplomacy, and international cooperation over the use of force.\u000aHowever, as we approach another presidential election, there is as yet no strong voice among the candidates to challenge U.S. foreign policy. Fear and questionable political calculation keep even most progressive politicians from daring to dissent as the crisis of foreign policy lurches further into perpetual militarism and war. That silence of political acquiescence has to be broken.\u000aNor is it a matter of concern only on the left. There are many Americans \u2014 right, left, or neither \u2014 who sense the futility of the course we\u2019re on. These voices have to be represented or the election process will be even more of a sham than we\u2019ve recently experienced.\u000aOne can\u2019t predict just what initiatives may take hold, but the recent U.S.-China climate agreement suggests that necessity can override significant obstacles. That accord is an important step forward, although a limited bilateral pact cannot substitute for an essential international climate treaty. There is a glimmer of hope also in the U.S.-Russian joint action that removed chemical weapons from Syria , and in negotiations with Iran, which continue despite fierce opposition from U.S. hawks and the Israeli government. More recently, there is Obama\u2019s bold move \u2014 long overdue \u2014 to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba. Despite shifts in political fortunes, the unexpected can happen if there is a need and strong enough pressure to create an opportunity.\u000aWe do not claim to have ready-made solutions to the worsening crisis in international relations. We are certain that there is much we\u2019ve missed or underestimated. But if readers agree that U.S. foreign policy has a national and global impact, and that it is not carried out in the interests of the majority of the world\u2019s people, including our own, then we ask you to join this conversation.\u000aIf we are to expand the ability of the people to influence foreign policy, we need to defend democracy, and encourage dissent and alternative ideas. The threats to the world and to ourselves are so great that finding common ground trumps any particular interest. We also know that we won\u2019t all agree with each other, and we believe that is as it should be. There are multiple paths to the future. No coalition around changing foreign policy will be successful if it tells people to conform to any one pattern of political action.\u000aSo how does the call for changing course translate to something politically viable, and how do we consider the problem of power?\u000aThe power to make significant changes in policy ranges from the persistence of peace activists to the potential influence of the general public. In some circumstances, it becomes possible \u2014 as well as necessary \u2014 to make significant changes in the power structure itself.\u000aGreece comes to mind. Greek left organizations came together to form Syriza, the political party that was successfully elected to power on a platform of ending austerity. Spain\u2019s anti-austerity Podemos Party \u2014 now the number-two party in the country \u2014 came out of massive demonstrations in 2011 and was organized from the grassroots up. We do not argue one approach over the over, but the experiences in both countries demonstrate that there are multiple paths to generating change.\u000aCertainly progressives and leftists grapple with the problems of power. But progress on issues, particularly in matters like war and peace and climate change, shouldn\u2019t be conceived of as dependent on first achieving general solutions to the problems of society, however desirable.\u000a(Photo: Alex Abian / Flickr)\u000aSome Proposals\u000aWe also feel it is essential to focus on a few key questions lest we become \u201cThe United Front Against Bad Things.\u201d There are lots of bad things, but some are worse than others. Thrashing those out, of course, is part of the process of engaging in politics.\u000aWe know this will not be easy. Yet we are convinced that unless we take up this task, the world will continue to careen toward major disaster. Can we find common programmatic initiatives on which to unite?\u000aSome worthwhile approaches are presented in A Foreign Policy for All , published after a discussion and workshop that took place in Massachusetts in November 2014. We think everyone should take the time to study that document. We want to offer a few ideas of our own.\u000a1) We must stop the flood of corporate money into the electoral process, as well as the systematic disenfranchisement of voters through the manipulation of voting laws.\u000aIt may seem odd that we begin with a domestic issue, but we cannot begin to change anything about American foreign policy without confronting political institutions that are increasingly in the thrall of wealthy donors. Growing oligarchic control and economic inequality is not just an American problem, but also a worldwide one. According to Oxfam, by 2016 the world\u2019s richest 1 percent will control over 50 percent of the globe\u2019s total wealth. Poll after poll shows this growing economic disparity does not sit well with people.\u000a2) It\u2019s essential to begin reining in the vast military-industrial-intelligence complex that burns up more than a trillion dollars a year and whose interests are served by heightened international tension and war.\u000a3) President Barack Obama came into office pledging to abolish nuclear weapons. He should.\u000aInstead, the White House has authorized spending $352 billion to modernize our nuclear arsenal, a bill that might eventually go as high as $1 trillion when the cost of the supporting infrastructure is figured in. The possibility of nuclear war is not an abstraction. In Europe, a nuclear-armed NATO has locked horns with a nuclear-armed Russia. Tensions between China and the United States, coupled with current U.S. military strategy in the region \u2014 the so-called \u201cAirSea Battle\u201d plan \u2014 could touch off a nuclear exchange. Leaders in Pakistan and India are troublingly casual about the possibility of a nuclear war between the two South Asian countries. And one can never discount the possibility of an Israeli nuclear attack on Iran. In short, nuclear war is a serious possibility in today\u2019s world.\u000aOne idea is the campaign for nuclear-free zones, which there are scores of \u2014 ranging from initiatives written by individual cities to the Treaty of Tlatelolco covering Latin America, the Treaty of Raratonga for the South Pacific, and the Pelindaba Treaty for Africa. Imagine how a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East would change the politics of the region.\u000aWe should also support the Marshall Islands in its campaign demanding the implementation of Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty eliminating nuclear weapons and moving toward general disarmament. If the great powers took serious steps toward full nuclear disarmament, it would make it difficult for nuclear-armed non-treaty members that have nuclear weapons \u2014 North Korea, Israel, Pakistan, and India \u2014 not to follow suit. The key to this, however, is \u201cgeneral disarmament\u201d and a pledge to remove war as an instrument of foreign policy.\u000a4) Any effort to change foreign policy must eventually confront the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which in the words of former U.S. Central Command leader James Mattis, is a \u201cpreeminent flame that keeps the pot boiling in the Middle East.\u201d While the U.S. and its NATO allies are quick to apply sanctions on Russia for its annexation of the Crimea, they have done virtually nothing about the continued Israeli occupation and annexation of Palestinian lands.\u000a5) Ending and renouncing military blockades that starve populations as an instrument of foreign policy \u2014 Cuba, Gaza, and Iran come to mind \u2014 would surely change the international political climate for the better.\u000a6) Let\u2019s dispense our predilection for \u201chumanitarian intervention,\u201d which is too often an excuse for the great powers to overthrow governments with which they disagree.\u000aAs Walden Bello, former Philippine Congressman for the Citizens\u2019 Action Party and author of Dilemmas of Domination: The Unmasking of the American Empire, writes : \u201cHumanitarian intervention sets a very dangerous precedent that is used to justify future violation of the principle of national sovereignty. One cannot but conclude from the historical record that NATO\u2019s intervention in the Kosovo conflict helped provide the justification for the invasion of Afghanistan, and the justifications for both interventions in turn were employed to legitimize the invasion of Iraq and the NATO war in Libya.\u201d\u000a7) Climate change is an existential issue, and as much a foreign policy question as war and peace. It can no longer be neglected.\u000aThus far, the U.S. has taken only baby steps toward controlling greenhouse gas emissions, but polls overwhelmingly show that the majority of Americans want action on this front. It\u2019s also an issue that reveals the predatory nature of corporate capitalism and its supporters in the halls of Congress. As we have noted, control of energy supplies and guaranteeing the profits of oil and gas conglomerates is a centerpiece of American foreign policy.\u000aAs Naomi Klein notes in This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate , the climate movement must \u201carticulate not just an alternative set of policy proposals, but an alternative worldview to rival the one at the heart of the ecological crisis. A worldview embedded in interdependence rather than hyper-individualism, reciprocity rather than dominance, and cooperation rather than hierarchy.\u201d\u000a(350.org / Flickr)\u000aInternational and Regional Organizations\u000aFinally, international and regional organizations must be strengthened. For years, mainstream media propaganda has bemoaned the ineffectiveness of the United Nations, while Washington \u2014 especially Congress \u2014 has systematically weakened the organization and tried to consign it to irrelevance in the public\u2019s estimation.\u000aThe current structure of the United Nations is undemocratic. The five \u201cbig powers\u201d that emerged from World War II \u2014 the United States, Britain, France, China, and Russia \u2014 dominate the Security Council with their use of the veto. Two of the earth\u2019s continents, Africa and Latin America, have no permanent members on the Council.\u000aA truly democratic organization would use the General Assembly as the decision-making body, with adjustments for size and population. Important decisions, like the use of force, could require a super majority.\u000aAt the same time, regional organizations like the African Union, the Union of South American Nations, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Arab League, and others, have to be strengthened as well. Had the UN Security Council listened to the African Union, which was prepared to start negotiations with the Gaddafi regime, the current Libyan debacle might have been avoided. In turn that might have prevented the spread of war to central Africa and the countries of Mali and Niger.\u000aWorking for a dramatic shift in U.S. policy, away from the hubris of \u201cAmerican exceptionalism,\u201d is not to downgrade the enormous importance of the United States. Alongside and in contradiction to the tragic consequences of our misuse of military power, the contributions of the American people to the world are vast and many-faceted. None of the great challenges of our time can be met successfully without America acting in collaboration with the majority of the world\u2019s governments and people.\u000aThere certainly are common interests that join people of all nations regardless of differences in government, politics, culture, and beliefs. Will those interests become strong enough to override the systemic pressures that fuel greed, conflict, war, and ultimate catastrophe? There is a lot of history, and no dearth of dogma, that would seem to sustain a negative answer. But dire necessity and changing reality may produce more positive outcomes in a better, if far from perfect, world.\u000aIt is time for change, time for the very best efforts of all who nurture hopes for a saner world.\u000aConn Hallinan is a journalist and a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus. His writings appear online at Dispatches From the Edge . Leon Wofsy is a retired biology professor and long-time political activist. His comments on current affairs appear online at Leon\u2019s OpEd .\u000aThe authors would like to thank colleagues at Foreign Policy In Focus and numerous others who exchanged views with us and made valuable suggestions. We also appreciate Susan Watrous\u2019 very helpful editorial assistance.\u000a
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VTrade Columns\u000aWhy Democrats Should Think Twice About Voting for TPP\u000aAs President Obama twists arms to pass \u201cfast track,\u201d a look back at the Democrats who helped Clinton win the bloody trade battle of 1993.\u000a(Image: Flickr / Woody Wood )\u000aIt\u2019s serious flashback time for those involved in the 1993 debate over the North America Free Trade Agreement. With the \u201cfast track\u201d trade vote expected as early as this Thursday, a Democratic president is once again twisting arms and dangling rewards in a desperate effort to muster votes for a corporate-driven trade deal. And just like in 1993, the vote will be one of those rare bipartisan moments in Washington. The word is only about a dozen members remain on the fence, most of them Democrats. The president is reportedly putting the tightest screws on members of the Congressional Black Caucus. After the NAFTA wheeling and dealing began in earnest back in 1993, it didn\u2019t take long to push enough Dems off the fence. All these years later, NAFTA remains the basic blueprint for every U.S. trade deal.\u000aLet me skip over NAFTA\u2019s failure to deliver on promises for workers, the environment, human rights, etc. These have all been extensively documented over the years by the Institute for Policy Studies, and many others across the continent. President Obama acknowledged its flaws himself when he made a campaign trail promise to renegotiate the deal . Instead, let\u2019s take a look at what individual members got by helping to ram the pact through Congress. Did their support for the big business lobby\u2019s dream deal ensure a glittering political career?\u000aStarting at the top: Democratic House Speaker Tom Foley sided with the White House and against most of the House Democrats, including Majority Leader Richard Gephardt. In his 30-year political career, that controversial move stood out enough for the New York Times to mention it in Foley\u2019s obituary . A year after the NAFTA vote, the obit noted, \u201cMr. Foley became the first speaker since the Civil War to be defeated for re-election in his own district.\u201d\u000aOuch. While Foley\u2019s defeat can\u2019t be attributed to a single factor, his decision to side with the corporate lobby on NAFTA certainly didn\u2019t prevent his electoral humiliation either.\u000aFoley was not the only Democrat to flame out within a year of casting a vote for NAFTA. In fact, of the 34 Democratic incumbents who were defeated in the Republican sweep of 1994, 16 had voted for NAFTA. Several of these losers had been among the fence-sitters who received goodies from the administration.\u000aPublic Citizen has meticulously documented many of these trade vote deals over the past two decades and is planning to release a new report this week on the lessons from all this horse-trading. (Look for the report soon here .) What it found over the years is that most of these promises were never fulfilled. In a detailed 2001 report following up on the NAFTA deals, Public Citizen concluded that \u201csystematically, the White House promises of special safeguards for U.S. farm commodities, bridges and more remained unfulfilled. Exceptions were several meaningless promises, such as photographs with the president, and one campaign fund-raising event.\u201d\u000aOne of these unfulfilled promises targeted textile and apparel state members. In the days before the NAFTA vote, President Bill Clinton sent them letters aimed at calming concerns about a pending global trade rule to phase out import protections on these products within 10 years. The administration would secure an extension to 15 years, Clinton promised. A month after the NAFTA vote, U.S. negotiators accepted the 10-year timeline.\u000aRep. Clete Donald Johnson, Jr. was one of the targets of that empty promise. After voting for NAFTA, the Georgia Democrat got demolished in 1994, losing by a margin of more than 30 percent . A few years later, Clinton offered Johnson a consolation prize: a post as chief U.S. trade negotiator for textiles, a sector in rapid decline due to low-wage foreign competition.\u000aRep. Bill Sarpalius, of Texas, was another NAFTA sellout whose political career was cut short. According to Public Citizen , he pocketed a bevy of promises, including a new federally funded nuclear research lab that was to be located in his district. After Sarpalius lost his seat in 1994, the lab deal fell through.\u000aRep. David Price also lost his re-election bid after casting his NAFTA vote. According to Multinational Monitor , the North Carolina Democrat came out in support of the deal after the Clinton administration conceded to his long-sought demands to award American Airlines two lucrative international air routes that would benefit his district. Price later regained a seat in Congress and is now once again sitting on the fence in the fast track debate.\u000aThe lure of prestigious institutional pork proved dangerously tempting for other members as well. Clinton promised Rep. Lewis Payne, Jr. of Virginia that his district would be considered as the future site of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The Institute wound up in Gaithersburg, Maryland.\u000aDems from Dallas were proud to get a promise from the Clinton administration to site the new NAFTA Commission for Labor Cooperation in that city. Representatives Eddie Bernice Johnson and Jack Bryant both proudly attended the inaugural ceremony in 1995, along with Dallas mayor (and later Obama U.S. trade representative) Ron Kirk.\u000aCornell University professor Lance Compa, who directed labor law research at the Commission, told me, \u201cThey thought they were getting dozens and dozens of high-paid professionals who would pump money into the local economy. They were disappointed when the grand total of nine Secretariat staff arrived.\u201d Less than five years later, the Commission was moved to Washington, DC . During the Bush administration, it was quietly shut down.\u000aWhy President Obama is pulling out the stops for fast track, we may never know. After 20 years, it\u2019s still hard to fathom why President Clinton was willing to sell out the store for NAFTA.\u000aIn his brilliant book The Selling of Free Trade: NAFTA, Washington, and the Subversion of American Democracy, John R. MacArthur provides some insights. Rahm Emanuel, per usual, was particularly candid. Then a top advisor to Clinton, Emanuel was a key leader of the NAFTA war room, along with chief trade negotiator Mickey Kantor and NAFTA czar William Daley. Asked about Clinton\u2019s final drive for passage, Emanuel said: \u201cHe had to win. It\u2019s better to win than to lose. I\u2019m a big believer in that. I do not believe in moral victories.\u201d\u000a
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VEnergy Op-Eds\u000aRelying on Coal for Electricity is Destroying Appalachia\u000aThe coal economy amounts to a major stumbling block for Appalachia, home to some of America's poorest communities.\u000aOriginally in The Herald-Mail .\u000a(Image: Shutterstock)\u000aAs a child, I remember sitting on my father\u2019s shoulders as we surveyed a valley below. He said, \u201cThis is where your Daddy\u2019s from,\u201d and my response was, \u201cThen I\u2019m from here, too.\u201d I wonder if that mountain from which we surveyed the valley is gone now.\u000aA year after my father\u2019s death, I went on a memorial trip with my family to the Mid-Ohio Valley in West Virginia and Ohio. My dad grew up there and was always proud of being an Appalachian hillbilly.\u000a On the second day of the trip, I found myself in a cemetery in Noble County where many of my father\u2019s ancestors are buried. It was a peaceful place \u2014 shaded by trees and decorated with flowers \u2014 but the headstones had fallen over and were in disarray. On the adjacent mountaintop, we could see an ugly gouge.\u000aThis was no accident. Mountaintop removal mining had gutted the local landscape. When mining companies blew the top off the nearby mountain to access coal seams, the blasts were so powerful that they had knocked over the headstones.\u000aMy father, a United Methodist minister and attorney, was a no-nonsense man. When he first heard that the area around the cemetery had become subjected to this extreme form of strip mining, he showed up in a small county court to be the lone voice in opposition.\u000aI\u2019m proud of my father for speaking up to defend our land and heritage. But there are many who have been disenfranchised in much more grievous ways by the coal economy and don\u2019t have someone to speak up for them.\u000aAppalachia is home to some of the poorest communities in America. That has made it easy for coal mining companies to come in, blow apart more than 500 mountains, bury more than 2,000 miles of headwater streams and pollute the groundwater \u2014 all while claiming that the coal economy is essential to these local communities.\u000aMichael Hendryx, a professor of Applied Health Science at Indiana University in Bloomington, has shown that the median household income for Appalachian counties where coal mining is a major industry is only $28,287, versus $30,614 in the rest of Appalachia and $36,622 nationwide. If the coal economy is really such a boon, why are the communities that depend on it so poor?\u000aAnd it\u2019s not just that Appalachian coal country is poor; it\u2019s also sick and dying. Cancer and cardiorespiratory diseases run rampant in these communities. Each year in West Virginia, health impacts from coal mining kill 578 people.\u000aIf coal mining is that deadly in West Virginia, what toll is the coal economy taking on the whole nation?\u000aIn Maryland, we get almost half of our electricity from coal, most of which is extracted from the Appalachian mountains. This state draws too much of its energy at the expense of our poorest and most powerless neighbors. As a Christian, I can\u2019t accept an economic model that keeps communities in poverty, destroys God\u2019s creation and kills people.\u000aLet me be clear: I don\u2019t blame everyone working in the coal economy for the damage it inflicts, including the miners themselves. The problem is that we need a new economic model that values the earth and our neighbors\u2019 lives.\u000aMy father raised me to do whatever I could to faithfully care for my neighbors and all of God\u2019s creation. He preached from the pulpit that with grace, anyone could turn their stumbling blocks into stepping stones.\u000aThe best way I can think to honor my dad is to faithfully advocate for a better economy \u2014 one built on renewable energy. People of faith across Maryland must work together to turn the stumbling blocks of the coal economy into the stepping stones of wind and solar energy.\u000aCoal mining, especially mountaintop removal mining, must stop.\u000aClara Summers is a New Economy Maryland Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.\u000a
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sVhttp://otherwords.org/the-year-of-the-internet-voter/
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VThe Year of the Internet Voter\u000aPoliticians ignore the rising digital coalition at their peril.\u000aBy Craig Aaron\u000aIn the 1996 election it was the soccer mom. In 2004 it was the NASCAR dad. Could 2016 be the year of the Internet voter?\u000aThe Internet has grown from a fad to an essential tool to a platform that\u2019s catalyzed a growing political constituency.\u000aPollsters have identified a fast-growing, educated group of \u201cdigital voters\u201d who spend several hours a day online. This group supports Net Neutrality, worries about intrusions on their privacy, and believes the Internet is a crucial service that everyone should be able to access.\u000aAccording to a survey Freedman Consulting conducted after the 2014 midterm elections, 60 percent of voters said they\u2019re more likely to support a government official who\u2019s \u201ccommitted to protecting the free and open Internet.\u201d\u000aAnd those are just midterm voters. Those numbers will likely rise in a presidential year, when more young voters and people of color cast ballots.\u000aThis emerging Internet constituency cuts across party lines. These voters aren\u2019t united by ideology or partisanship. They\u2019re up for grabs.\u000aWhat does unite the Internet community is a shared set of values around free speech, individual choice, universal access, privacy, and openness. They\u2019re connected by the Internet but motivated by what the Internet empowers them to do: innovate without permission, tell their own stories without filters, and organize without gatekeepers.\u000aInternet2016.net\u000aAnd over the last few years there\u2019s been a dramatic upswing in Internet activism.\u000aMillions of people pushed the Federal Communications Commission to protect Net Neutrality. Vocal opposition defeated the Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger. A right-left coalition advanced surveillance reform. And a mass mobilization stymied the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act, two destructive Web censorship bills.\u000aAnd those are just Internet-related issues. These days any kind of popular organizing depends on the open Internet, whether it\u2019s mobilizing for climate action or building the #BlackLivesMatter movement against police brutality.\u000aSquint and you can see the outlines of a powerful coalition. The question is how to turn all of this populist energy into real political power and lasting change.\u000aWhat the Internet needs are more champions in D.C. And if we want our political leaders to get serious about protecting the Internet, then the Internet needs to get more serious about politics.\u000aJust not too serious.\u000aThere\u2019s a real opportunity to take the best of the Internet \u2014 the unbridled creativity, the irrational confidence, the decentralized organizing, the goofy memes \u2014 and bring it to the 2016 election.\u000aWhile there\u2019s a shared understanding of the Internet\u2019s importance and even a shared set of values, there isn\u2019t yet a shared identity among Internet users. That\u2019s why my group, the Free Press Action Fund, recently launched Internet2016.net .\u000aMy allies and I want to make the Internet voter visible in 2016. We don\u2019t want to create an Internet Party, but we do intend to throw lots of Internet parties to raise awareness and make the Internet a top issue in the election.\u000aJust imagine presidential candidates wandering around state fairs and seeing \u201cI <3 the Internet + I Vote\u201d signs at every turn. Imagine voters confronting candidates on social media and the stump with questions about Net Neutrality, surveillance, and the cost of broadband.\u000aThis isn\u2019t about endorsing or electing any one candidate. It\u2019s about ensuring that all of our politicians make protecting the Internet a priority. If politicians see the Internet in their faces everywhere they go, we\u2019ll have a much better chance of getting the leaders we need to guarantee the Internet stays free and open long after Election Day.\u000aCraig Aaron is the president and CEO of the Free Press Action Fund (FreePress.net). Learn more about the Internet 2016 campaign at internet2016.net.\u000a
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sVhttp://otherwords.org/faking-it-while-the-world-burns/
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VFaking It While the World Burns\u000aWords alone won\u2019t hinder climate change.\u000aBy Emily Schwartz Greco\u000aRex Tillerson, of all people, just did the climate movement a big favor.\u000aHe didn\u2019t hand the Sierra Club tens of millions of dollars to fight the coal industry like former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg . Nor did the chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobil follow former hedge fund investor Tom Steyer \u2018s lead by giving political candidates with climate cred campaign cash.\u000aWhat did Tillerson, whom Forbes ranks among the world\u2019s most powerful people , do? He disclosed his take on the proper role for big oil and gas companies regarding global warming, declaring: \u201cWe\u2019re not going to fake it.\u201d\u000aThe head of the biggest U.S. oil company made this blunt statement after reporters and investors prodded him about the company\u2019s climate change plans. Exxon\u2019s European competitors , including BP, Shell, and Total, admit that fossil fuels harm the climate and want to be \u201cpart of the solution,\u201d as Total CEO Patrick Pouyanne puts it.\u000aThese corporations are even urging world leaders to make them  pay for their carbon pollution \u2014 a move bound to crimp oil consumption.\u000aMost Americans worry about global warming. By refusing to voluntarily revamp their business models, Exxon and No. 2 U.S. oil company Chevron are leaving it up to you to use less dirty energy. You know, drive less. Turn off more lights.\u000aThat won\u2019t suffice. All levels of government must shrink humanity\u2019s collective carbon footprint through regulation, taxation, better urban planning, and green-energy incentives.\u000aMikael Miettinen/Flickr\u000aMaybe you think President Barack Obama is on it. But he\u2019s consistently inconsistent with climate action. One day he\u2019s doing something nice for a dirty-energy industry. The next, he\u2019s making a poignant statement about global warming.\u000aIn recent weeks, the Obama administration has signaled that it will open vast tracts of public land to heavily subsidized coal mining , mainly in Wyoming, and has greenlighted offshore arctic oil drilling . Obama\u2019s emissions-cutting plan treats gas-fired power plants as an improvement over burning coal. Yet gas fracking releases vast quantities of methane , a potent climate pollutant.\u000aMeanwhile, Obama warned during his tour of the National Hurricane Center  that climate change is fueling extreme weather. He acknowledged via an  inaugural tweet  that climate action is a national security priority, and talked about that connection in a  commencement address at the Coast Guard Academy.\u000a\u201cThis is the only planet we\u2019ve got,\u201d Obama said in a recent radio address . \u201cAnd years from now, I want to be able to look our children and grandchildren in the eye and tell them that we did everything we could to protect it.\u201d\u000aSimilarly, those European oil companies whose CEOs insist they worry about carbon emissions are exploiting previously untapped reserves.\u000aShell is embarking on the arctic oil drilling the Obama administration approved off the Alaskan coast , Seattle\u2019s kayactivists be damned. Who cares if Ben van Beurden , its CEO, admonished fellow oil-industry leaders for being \u201cslow to acknowledge climate change\u201d?\u000aFive years after its Deepwater Horizon disaster sullied the Gulf of Mexico, BP is on the verge of initiating oil drilling off  Australia\u2019s southern coast \u2014 a more remote area. But BP CEO Bob Dudley  noted earlier this year that \u201cthe most likely path for carbon emissions, despite current government policies and intentions, does not appear sustainable.\u201d\u000aWords can\u2019t slow the pace of climate change or protect the environment from the other ravages of fossil-fuel extraction. And corporate and political leaders who say they care and then fail to take meaningful climate action are lulling the rest of us into thinking they\u2019re doing what it takes.\u000aIn turn, that\u2019s delaying the tough work required to shift toward an economy fueled by greener energy. Rex Tillerson is right: They\u2019re faking it.\u000aColumnist Emily Schwartz Greco is the managing editor of OtherWords, a non-profit national editorial service run by the Institute for Policy Studies. OtherWords.org.\u000aTagged: big oil , BP , carbon tax , climate change , exxon , Obama administration , shareholder activism , Shell\u000aJohn Winter\u000awhat Beurden and Dudley know is that with less production, they can raise the price, while greenwashing the issue. In AA, there\u2019s a mantra that goes\u2026stop drinking, and change everything. If we think local and act local, the world will heal itself.\u000aclimatehawk1\u000aThank god we have Rex to show us the light. Really, there wasn\u2019t a better icon to anoint?\u000aPaulK2\u000aI wanted more than words. So, I invented a way to economically retrofit buildings with stored nighttime solar heat. That patent is close to coming out. I invented the low cost leader for thermal solar electricity, patent 8823197 plus some new improvements. I invented a better no-fuel greenhouse for mid-winter vegetable production, patent 8048199, with an affordable algae growing extension.\u000aMy carbon footprint is small enough but my carbon handprint (what I actually do) is potentially huge. I want people to join me so that we have a real handprint, finally more than words. It\u2019s not real until it\u2019s for sale somewhere.\u000aMore\u000a
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VTaking Our Sweet Crude Time\u000aWorld leaders are resolving to stop cooking the planet after they\u2019re dead.\u000aBy Emily Schwartz Greco\u000aAfter a quarter-century of buzz over global warming, the climate talkers are at it again, doing whatever it is they do. Visitors to the next big climate change summit, in an act of glorious irony, will pack Paris-bound jets flown by Air France \u2014 one of the meeting\u2019s big corporate sponsors with deep ties to fossil fuels.\u000aThe UN-organized meeting won\u2019t take place until December, but Pope Francis is already doing his best to make sure global powers give it plenty of bandwidth.\u000aDays before a conservative Italian newspaper leaked the Pope\u2019s game-changing encyclical, the leaders of the seven richest industrial nations (G7) were already talking about the need for \u201cdeep cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions\u201d and \u201ca decarbonization of the global economy over the course of this century.\u201d\u000aTranslation: The G7 leaders want expiration-date stickers slapped on the oil, gas, and coal industries.\u000aIdentifying the culprits that pump carbon into today\u2019s economy or promising to do something about it themselves would have been bolder. Failing to name names shows how cowed these presidents and prime ministers are.\u000aStill, collectively kicking the world\u2019s fossil-fuel addiction means no more mining coal by blasting the tops off mountains. No more offshore oil platforms prone to bursting into flames. No more telling communities they can\u2019t ban frackers from operating near freshwater sources.\u000aPope in a China Shop, an OtherWords cartoon by Khalil Bendib\u000a\u201cWhat is occurring is in many ways unprecedented in the history of international cooperation in respect to vision and scale,\u201d chirped Christiana Figueres , the UN\u2019s top climate change official.\u000aFigueres makes it sound like a big-fossil deal. As Pope Francis might say, Hallelujah. But wait. They\u2019re talking about the year 2100.\u000aHow old will you be 85 years from now? Oh, right. You\u2019ll be dead. Me too. I doubt 134 will be the new 30 at the turn of the next century. No one writing this accord will get to personally declare the world\u2019s energy matrix fossil-free. Probably none of their children either.\u000aPunting to a generation not yet born isn\u2019t leadership. Real to-do lists are doable during your own lifespan.\u000aDid Abraham Lincoln promise when he delivered the Emancipation Proclamation that all enslaved people would be free by 1948?\u000aWhen the Supreme Court demanded an end to the segregation of American schoolchildren with all deliberate speed , did the justices add \u201cso get it over and done with before 2039 rolls around\u201d?\u000aAnd when Ronald Reagan shouted in Cold War-weary Berlin \u201cTear down this wall,\u201d did he elaborate with the words: \u201cno later than the year 2072\u201d?\u000aNo, no, and no.\u000aSure, re-wiring the global grid takes time. But given what\u2019s at stake and the speed with which the costs of wind and solar power are dropping, 85 years is too long. How about some gumption and a bigger hurry?\u000aApparently G7 leaders and some climate talkers flirted with a brisker pace that would have meant kicking the worldwide fossil-fuel habit by 2050. Both groups wound up saying \u2014 I\u2019m paraphrasing here \u2014 \u201cnah.\u201d Aiming for 2100 is a compromise between doing nothing and doing what\u2019s necessary right now.\u000aOur country, the world\u2019s No. 2 carbon polluter after China, can transition to full reliance on energy derived from wind, water, and sunlight by 2050, half a century faster than the G7\u2019s timetable. A group of researchers from several leading universities even drew up a state-by-state roadmap.\u000aAs the mother of two kids still in elementary school, bequeathing this headache to them seems bad enough. Why are global leaders shunting this tough job to our children\u2019s grandchildren?\u000aColumnist Emily Schwartz Greco is the managing editor of OtherWords, a non-profit national editorial service run by the Institute for Policy Studies. OtherWords.org.\u000a
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sVhttp://www.ips-dc.org/hacked/
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VOriginally in OtherWords .\u000aI\u2019ve gotten a lot of unwelcome mail from the feds these last few years, like a copy of my indictment for blowing the whistle on the CIA\u2019s torture program. But this latest delivery was something altogether new.\u000aMy jaw dropped as I scanned the form letter from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) informing me of a \u201ccybersecurity incident.\u201d Hackers, reportedly from China, had worked their way into the U.S. government\u2019s computers and stolen personal information related to every single federal employee  who ever filled out an application.\u000aI left government in 2011 after serving two years with OPM, 14 years with the CIA, and two years with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I\u2019m one of millions of government workers, past and present, whose personal data \u2014 including Social Security numbers \u2014 was compromised.\u000aOPM said it would generously pay for 18 months of identity theft insurance. Thanks a lot, Uncle Sam.\u000aI don\u2019t much care if the Chinese know that I\u2019m a former CIA officer. It\u2019s no secret. I published a bestselling book about my years at the CIA. I give interviews in the press and on TV speaking out against torture. I lecture at colleges and universities about ethics in intelligence operations.\u000aBut the information the Chinese stole included my original application to the CIA \u2014 my Standard Form 86. That form included information on my family members, friends, neighbors, and references. That means their information was probably compromised too.\u000aIngrid Richter/Flickr\u000aMultiply these breaches millions of times, and that\u2019s a major snafu.\u000aSo where were our federal law enforcement agencies? Why weren\u2019t they protecting us? I think I can tell you.\u000aWhile the hackers were worming their way into government workers\u2019 personal data, the Justice Department was busy targeting scientist Nancy Black of Monterey, California.\u000aBlack was a marine biologist accused of \u201c interfering with the feeding of a wild animal \u201d \u2014 a felony. She\u2019d allegedly whistled at a whale during a whale watching tour she offered to tourists on her boat. After spending thousands on legal fees, she finally pled guilty to a misdemeanor count of violating the Marine Mammal Act.\u000aShe avoided a possible 27-year prison sentence, but still ended up paying a fine of $12,500.\u000aThe Justice Department was also vigorously prosecuting John Yates, who captained a fishing boat in the Gulf of Mexico. A U.S. fisheries official had told Yates to keep any undersized fish he caught separate from larger fish. Instead, Yates threw the smaller fish back into the water, hoping to avoid a fine .\u000aHis reward? He was charged with a felony count of violating the Sarbanes-Oxley Act \u2014 a federal law written in 2002 to prevent accounting firms from destroying or falsifying documents. Government lawyers twisted that statute to prosecute Yates for throwing fish in the wrong place.\u000aYates fought his case all the way to the Supreme Court. He won , but not before spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money to defend himself. The Justice Department likely spent millions pursuing and then defending the case.\u000aMeanwhile, the Chinese were hacking our systems.\u000aPicking low-hanging fruit like workers who make mistakes or non-violent drug offenders is a favored tactic of the department. It bankrupts the defendants and forces them to take plea deals, even on lousy charges.\u000aIt\u2019s time for the Justice Department to get its act together: Stop targeting hardworking Americans and start protecting the American people.\u000aJohn Kiriakou is an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.\u000a
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sVhttps://youtu.be/5w68-0Vr_YY
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VRating is available when the video has been rented.\u000aThis feature is not available right now. Please try again later.\u000aPublished on Jun 20, 2015\u000aUpcoming screening and event held at University of District of Columbia, Thursday June 25, 6 - 8 p.m.\u000aCategory\u000a
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sVhttp://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/damning-new-report-reveals-walmarts-elaborate-tax-dodging-scheme?sc=fb
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S"Damning New Report Reveals Walmart's Elaborate Tax Dodging Scheme. The mega-retailer has 78 subsidiaries in 15 offshore tax havens."
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sVhttp://bit.ly/1L3dMtX
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VPoetry Database Launch Party and Silent Auction »\u000a\u201c Hands Up Don\u2019t Shoot Our Youth Movement ,\u201d a documentary film produced by Ralph L. Crowder III\u2026    On the day of Mike Brown\u2019s funeral in Ferguson, MO, there was an atmosphere of rest and calm in the people\u2019s struggle for justice. It created a unique opportunity for Freedom Radio News & Culture Television Network to engage a needed Black perspective of media communication in which a video camera was on and captured a wide range of voices. The input on the death of Mike Brown and the uprising of young black youth is a centerpiece of discussion in this very important news documentary regarding the climate and conditions of Ferguson, MO (Anywhere U.S.A.).\u000aFollowing the film will be a discussion with the filmmaker, organiziners in Baltimore giving an update about what is happening there and to discuss ways build the strong national protracted struggle needed for survival.\u000aThere will also be live Hip Hop performance by Baltimore based artists, Son of Nun .\u000aPanelists:\u000a
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sVhttp://www.ips-dc.org/?p=38399
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VOriginally in Foreign Policy In Focus .\u000aPhoto: U.S. Pacific Fleet / Flickr\u000aIsland disputes are a big thing in Asia. Japan and China both claim the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. Japan and South Korea tussle over Dokdo/Takeshima. Japan and Russia still haven\u2019t definitively sorted out who owns the Kuriles/Northern Territories.\u000aYou\u2019d think that these existing island disputes are a sufficient headache. But no: Countries in the region are making the maritime equivalent of mountains out of molehills. They are actually creating more islands, and thus more disputes.\u000aThe most prominent offender in the news these days is China, which has reclaimed 2,000 acres  of sea around the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. It\u2019s built an airstrip on the Fiery Cross Reef, which had hitherto only been a couple of rocks jutting out of the sea, and installed  two mobile artillery guns as well.\u000aThe U.S. government has criticized China\u2019s construction projects and worried openly that Beijing wants to solidify (literally) its claims to the vast majority of the South China Sea. Other countries bordering the sea, particularly the Philippines and Vietnam, have also blasted China.\u000aWe\u2019re between the Shangri-La Asian security dialogue in Singapore (early June) and the U.S.-China Economic and Strategic Dialogue in Washington (end of June). That means two things. First, China has announced that its island reclamation is nearly over, probably to reduce a point of tension ahead of the Washington dialogue (and the meeting between President Obama and Premier Xi Jinping in September). Second, it\u2019s time once again for pundits to predict an inevitable war involving China.\u000a\u201cI\u2019d say the war with China will probably take place in the next 10 years,\u201d opined Professor Joseph Siracussa of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. Former commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet James Lyons, along with security analyst Richard Fisher, had a pointed recommendation for the Obama administration: \u201cEither it leads the way to a new \u2018armed peace\u2019 in this region, or China will soon commence a war for domination.\u201d\u000aA new armed peace in Asia? Hmm, that\u2019s what the Pacific Pivot was supposed to usher in. And didn\u2019t Pentagon chief Ashton Carter just announce in Singapore the \u201cnext phase\u201d of the Pacific Pivot, which includes a new $425 million maritime security initiative?\u000aWith the Obama administration\u2019s landmark trade deal with Asia in trouble in Congress, Washington is fretting about the erosion of its influence in the Pacific region, particularly in relation to China. The U.S. solution \u2014 throwing weapons at the problem \u2014 is counter-productive. Ongoing U.S. efforts to construct an armed peace in the region are only encouraging the cycle of escalation in the intra-regional disputes that have kept the region \u201con the rocks.\u201d\u000aRepurposing the Reefs\u000aNew island construction is not a Chinese innovation.\u000aJapan, for instance, has a long history of creating artificial islands, beginning with Dejima, the outpost constructed alongside Nagasaki in the 17th century to regulate trade with outsiders. In the late 1930s, Japan did exactly what China has been doing today in the South China Sea when it turned a few rocks called the Douglass Reef into Okinotorishima , an island marking its southernmost territory. The outpost\u2019s usefulness as a military base was limited, but Japan claimed an Exclusive Economic Zone around the island equal to 160,000 square miles . That\u2019s a lot of potential fish, oil, and valuable minerals. No surprise then that Japan has spent $600 million to prevent the tiny outcroppings from disappearing beneath the waves.\u000aAccording to the UN Law of the Sea convention, an island deserves that designation only if it can support humans and economic life. China has called the island, which at high tide is only about 10 square meters (that\u2019s meters, not miles), a bunch of rocks. The dispute continues.\u000aIn the South China Sea, meanwhile, other countries have pioneered the building of reefs into full-fledged islands. Critics of China have argued that these island-building attempts preceded a 2002 agreement that committed parties \u201cto exercise self-restraint in the conduct of activities that would complicate and escalate disputes\u201d and refrain from inhabiting \u201cpresently uninhabited islands, reefs, shoals, cays, and other features.\u201d Only China, the critics maintain, has violated the moratorium.\u000aNot so. Vietnam has also done land reclamation at two sites . And the Philippines has expanded an airstrip in the Spratlys. Both activities have taken place since 2002. China has come late to the party but with all the determination the world\u2019s largest economy can bring to bear. China security expert Yu Bin writes :\u000aDespite its long historical record of sovereignty claims, China physically possess the fewest islets in the Spratlys (eight compared with 29 by Vietnam and nine by the Philippines) and is the last one to construct runways and other large-scale facilities (Vietnam has constructed 10,000 square meters of facilities in its occupied reefs since 2011). Nor has China resorted to the use of force to retake the reefs in the Spratlys from other claimants but chooses instead to construct those islets it has physically possessed.\u000aPacific Pivot, Part Two\u000aU.S. allies are not surprisingly underwhelmed by what the Pacific pivot has translated into in terms of commitments of U.S. troops or hardware. The United States is still fixated on the Middle East, where it\u2019s trying to \u201cdegrade\u201d the Islamic State, negotiate a deal with Iran, and satisfy its obstreperous Gulf allies.\u000aThe modest Pacific pivot efforts Washington has launched so far include , according to Ashton Carter:\u000aproviding equipment and infrastructure support to the Vietnamese coast guard, helping the Philippines build a National Coast Watch System to improve its maritime domain awareness, and conducting sea surveillance exercises with Indonesia which recently included flight portions over the South China Sea for the first time.\u000aThe latest maritime security add-on only has a price tag \u2014 nearly half a billion dollars \u2014 but no specifics. After all, it originated in the Senate , not the Pentagon, and John McCain (R-AZ) just wanted to send a reassuring signal to the region. China is not thrilled by this circling of the wagons (or, more precisely, the ships of the Seventh Fleet).\u000aBut the real drivers of bilateral tension are elsewhere. U.S. modernization of its nuclear arsenal, our sale of advanced fighters to Japan, the push for South Korea to adopt our missile defense shield: These are the more structural provocations.\u000aViewed from this more strategic vantage point, the South China Sea is not just about fishing rights and potential energy deposits. The real issue is the degree to which China can use the area for its new class of nuclear submarines and whether, conversely, the United States can box China in.\u000aThe South China Sea, in other words, is a make-or-break region: where the United States either holds on to its geostrategic advantage or China manages to \u201cbreak out\u201d and challenge U.S. hegemony.\u000aBeijing has effectively accomplished this challenge in the geo-economic sphere, with its initiatives to set up a parallel set of global financial institutions . But up until recently, China simply didn\u2019t have sufficient nuclear weapons or conventional forces to assert itself regionally, much less globally. Creating another leg in its strategic forces \u2014 alongside a very modest number of nuclear-tipped ICBMs \u2014 represents a potential game-changer, but only if China has a home for these subs and a way for them to roam the Pacific and Indian Oceans.\u000aStakes for Washington\u000aWhen the United States wades into the South China Sea dispute, it\u2019s not just supporting allies like the Philippines or trying to drive a further wedge between China and Vietnam . Nor is it just about protecting the sea lanes through which so much of the world\u2019s resources flow.\u000aThe \u201cwho lost the South China Sea\u201d accusation that neoconservatives, liberal hawks, and Republican presidential candidates are preparing to level against the Obama administration \u2014 so reminiscent of of the 1950s debate over \u201cwho lost China?\u201d \u2014 is really about the preservation of U.S. global power.\u000aAlready there is much hand wringing inside the Beltway that the prospective defeat of the TPP represents the beginning of the end of global American hegemony. The recent vote against fast-track authority has sent a signal to U.S. allies in the Pacific that the much-vaunted pivot is just a sleight of hand. \u201cYou are either in or you are out,\u201d Singapore Foreign Minister K. Shanmugam told a U.S. audience in Washington this week. \u201cIt\u2019s very, very serious. The president wants it, everybody knows this is important, and you can\u2019t get it through. How credible are you going to be? The world doesn\u2019t wait. Not even for the United States.\u201d\u000aThe U.S. inability to help resolve the myriad island disputes in Asia and its failure to overcome domestic resistance to the TPP suggest that a time will come quite soon when America no longer rules the waves in the Pacific (or has the hegemonic power to waive the rules). There\u2019s still an opportunity to negotiate a more cooperative global economic and security system that reflects the new balance of power in the world. But the more the United States clings to the quickly disappearing status quo, the less influence it will have in the new dispensation being constructed not only \u201con the ground\u201d but in the world\u2019s waters as well.\u000aJohn Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies.\u000a
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VSenators: Read This Before Your Trade Vote\u000aRep. Bonior\u2019s Historic NAFTA Speech Speaks Volumes Today\u000aJune 22, 2015\u000a.\u000aOn November 17, 1993, Rep. David Bonior of Michigan, the Democratic House Whip, made a plea to his colleagues to listen to the voices of working people everywhere and reject the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). His speech failed to prevent passage of a trade deal that tilted the playing field away from workers, the environment, and democracy in favor of the largest globe-trotting corporations. But his words so captured what was at stake that I carried it around in my wallet for a decade until it literally decomposed.\u000aOn Tuesday, the U.S. Senate is scheduled to vote on another deeply flawed proposal to give up their authority to amend the NAFTA-style trade pacts currently being negotiated with nations in Asia and Europe . My Institute for Policy Studies colleague Sarah Anderson , along with Public Citizen , have recently documented a litany of failed promises by the Clinton administration to members of Congress as they rounded up votes to pass NAFTA in 1993. Senators: if the new round of deal-making hasn\u2019t already repulsed you, please read Rep. Bonior\u2019s words before you cast your vote on Tuesday. Undemocratic trade deals, shrouded in secrecy, were bad deals 22 years ago, and they are bad deals today.\u000aExcerpts from Rep. David Bonior\u2019s remarks to Congress before the NAFTA vote on November 17, 1993:\u000aMr. Chairman, we are not alone tonight.\u000aThe working people who stand against this treaty don\u2019t have degrees from Harvard.\u000aThey don\u2019t study economic models.\u000aAnd most of them have never heard of Adam Smith.\u000aBut they know when the deck is stacked against them.\u000aThey know it is not fair to ask American workers to compete against Mexican workers who earn $1 an hour.\u000aThat is not fair trade. That is not free trade.\u000aWe stand here tonight with the people who can\u2019t cut deals when they are a few dollars short.\u000aTo them, NAFTA isn\u2019t some economic theory.\u000aIt\u2019s real life.\u000aWhen jobs are lost, these are the people who have to sell their homes, pull their kids out of school, and look for new work.\u000aThose of us who take these concerns seriously have been called fearmongers, afraid to take risks, with no vision of the future.\u000aThat is an insult to the working families of this country.\u000aThese are the people who show their faith in this country every day.\u000aThey take risks every day that people who make their fortunes in the stock market would never understand.\u000aThey know we live in a global economy\u2026.\u000aBut they also know that the work of America is still done by people who pack a lunch, punch a clock, and pour their heart and soul into every paycheck.\u000aAnd we cannot afford to leave them behind.\u000aTonight, we are their voices. And we must stand with them.\u000aWe stand tonight with autoworkers in the Midwest, who can compete with any worker in the world, but ask: How can we compete if we don\u2019t have jobs?\u000aWe stand with the aerospace workers in California, who have seen jobs leave for Tijuana, and demand to know: why will we pay higher taxes to send our jobs to Mexico?\u000aWe stand tonight with church leaders, who have documented torture, corruption, and human rights abuses in Mexico, and ask us tonight: why does this treaty do nothing to stop that?\u000aWe stand with the workers in the maquiladoras, who hoped that when American companies moved to Mexico, they would have the opportunity to lift their families out of poverty, but instead find themselves mired in a river of toxins and when they try to raise their voices in protest, their own Government silences them.\u000aWe are their voices tonight.\u000aWe are not alone.\u000aFor standing with us in this Chamber tonight are all the Americans who came before us, who had the courage to fight against the odds and against the powers that be for a better future and a better life.\u000aThe men and women who struggled in sweatshops for a dime a day, who one day found the strength to stand up and say enough.\u000aThe farmers who faced drought and depression and foreclosure, who could have thrown it all away but found the courage to say never.\u000aThe farmworkers who saw children struggling 12 hours a day to work our harvests of plenty, who had the courage to stand up and say no more.\u000aThe men and women who crossed the bridge at Selma, who stood firm in the face of dogs, and hoses, and nightsticks. And when they were told that this was not the time to fight for justice responded we shall not be moved.\u000aThose are the people who stand with us tonight.\u000aTheir voices echo throughout this Chamber.\u000aWe must not turn our backs on all they fought for.\u000aWe must not turn our backs on all that was earned through the toil and the tears and the courage of our parents and grandparents.\u000aWe must move forward.\u000aThis vote is about more than money and markets.\u000aIt is about more than tariffs and free trade.\u000aIt is about basic values.\u000aIt is about who we are.\u000aAnd what we stand for as a people.\u000aIt\u2019s about the dignity of work.\u000aIt\u2019s about respect for human rights.\u000aIt\u2019s about democracy.\u000aMr. Chairman, if we don\u2019t stand up for working people in this country, who is going to?\u2026\u000aWe have come too far and sacrificed too much in this country to turn the clock back now.\u000aThis NAFTA is not the best we can do.\u000aWe can do better.\u000a
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VColumn, 463 words\u000aUnhappy Meals\u000aBy Jill Richardson\u000aMcDonald\u2019s is floundering.\u000aThere\u2019s no other way to say it. The global fast food chain has experienced declining U.S. sales for well over a year now. But why?\u000aI\u2019d love to gloat that Americans have finally caught on that the Golden Arches peddles terrible food, but that might not be the case.\u000aTheories for the slump abound.\u000aSome believe the menu is too confusing, slowing down service. Others say that consumers are drifting toward fast-casual chains like Chipotle and Panera, even if their food costs more. And Consumer Reports notes that McDonald\u2019s has the worst-tasting burger compared to 20 competitors.\u000aEven McDonald\u2019s itself doesn\u2019t seem to be sure. The company has introduced a Create Your Taste option, allowing consumers to customize their burgers. It promised to stop serving chicken raised with some antibiotics . In Southern California, the chain even tried serving kale .\u000aMcKale? No, just no.\u000aFortune magazine concluded that \u201cA growing segment of restaurant goers are choosing \u2018fresh and healthy\u2019 over \u2018fast and convenient,\u2019 and McDonald\u2019s is having trouble convincing consumers that it\u2019s both. Or even can be both.\u201d\u000aCookie M/Flickr\u000aWhich brings me to the chain\u2019s latest move: hiring former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs as its head of communications.\u000aThe talking point du jour is that McDonald\u2019s wants to build a \u201cmodern, progressive burger company.\u201d What does that even mean?\u000aYou\u2019ve got to give it to them, though \u2014 it at least sounds better than \u201cPlease forget about that Supersize Me  movie.\u201d\u000aMcDonald\u2019s didn\u2019t stop with hiring Gibbs, however. The Golden Arches brought on board another corporate superstar, Silvia Lagnado, as its head of marketing. Lagnado has previously worked for Dove, Unilever, and Bacardi.\u000aClearly, McDonald\u2019s thinks it\u2019s grappling with a marketing problem.\u000aThis points to a tactic I learned back in business school: When consumers don\u2019t like your products, you can either make your products better\u2026or simply make your customers think they\u2019re better.\u000aWith this move, McDonald\u2019s seems to be taking the latter route .\u000aArticles analyzing the company\u2019s poor sales underscore some reasons why consumers have turned their back on the chain. Instead of adding a few leaves of kale here and there, why not remove the anti-foaming agent in the French fries?\u000aIn other words, instead of putting lipstick on a factory-farmed pig, why not switch to serving more ethical foods?\u000aI have no love for the chain, but I hope McDonald\u2019s new marketing gurus guide them toward real change, and not just a new advertising campaign.\u000aJust because billboards and jingles repeatedly tell us we\u2019re \u201clovin\u2019 it,\u201d that doesn\u2019t make it true. If McDonald\u2019s opts for new slogans instead of making substantial changes, send them a message by buying better food somewhere else.\u000aOtherWords columnist Jill Richardson is the author of Recipe for America: Why Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It.  OtherWords.org .\u000aTagged: advertising , fast food , mcdonalds\u000aDago T\u000aDeclining sales for well over a year? Bet Mickey D\u2019s still brings it to the bank in wheelbarrows.\u000aMore\u000a
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V(Image: Shutterstock / a katz )\u000aAs a progressive person of faith, I\u2019ve had an interesting week. Pope Francis released an encyclical that called on the global human community to practice compassion, for each other and for our common home. In it, the Pope asked that our actions should be carried out in light of our \u201cdeepest convictions about love, justice, and peace.\u201d It was inspiring and hopeful.\u000aBut the encyclical was released merely hours after a young, white man entered a historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina and opened fire, killing nine people inside. We now know the shooter had long talked of sparking a race war and wanting segregation reinstated.\u000aA day after this horrific event, I attended my weekly Bible study group, where we talked about motivations of the human heart with little mention of what happened in Charleston. We closed the meeting with a prayer, during which we said, \u201cGod, we will never understand why these things happen. And we may never know what motivated the person who carried out his terrible act.\u201d\u000aBut we do understand. We understand this person committed an act of terror because of the narrative that has permeated our country since its founding \u2013 those who are different from us are less human than us, and we can treat them accordingly.\u000aAnd we do know. We know the shooter was motivated by a conviction that Black people in America don\u2019t deserve the same things as White people in America.\u000aTo claim \u2013 as people of faith \u2013 that we don\u2019t understand or we don\u2019t know is to abdicate our call to be a prophetic voice to the world. We would be failing to act out of love, justice, and peace, as the Pope calls us to.\u000aOn Sunday morning, I\u2019m going to sit in a church, like I do most Sundays. Many Christians around the country will do the same. Pastors will lead us in prayer for peace and for comfort. But many of them will neglect to mention the hate-filled narrative against people of color or low income people that is embedded in our structures and systems in this country.\u000aMany pastors will abdicate their call to speak the truth because racism is too uncomfortable and too difficult to talk about from the pulpit. Some won\u2019t want to risk offending people or losing parishioners. It is certainly not \u201cseeker-friendly.\u201d\u000aAs people of faith, we are complicit to hate and to racism when we don\u2019t act to dismantle the systems and structures that perpetuate it. We are complicit when we don\u2019t speak hard truths about what\u2019s wrong with the world because it\u2019s risky and uncomfortable.\u000aThe places of worship where people of faith go to take refuge from the world are no longer safe. And we, as people of faith, can no longer turn a blind eye. We can no longer leave race conversations out of the pulpit \u2013 and our Bible studies \u2013 because violent, destructive racism literally came into a sacred space this week, and brought hell on earth.\u000aWe have to take courage and speak \u2013 like the prophets of old \u2013 against the injustices of this world. We have to take up the task of demanding love, justice, and peace even when \u2013 especially when \u2013 it is too risky to do so. It is, simply, our calling and our divine purpose.\u000aThere are great ideas on how to move forward at  BlackLivesMatter  or FergusonAction . For resources on how to have conversations about race in faith communities, visit gcorr.org/resources .\u000aElaine de Leon Ahn is a graduate of Wesley Theological Seminary, where she studied public theology (the intersection of theology and public issues).  She is also IPS\u2019 Communications Director.\u000a
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VA Crime Against Humanity Sent Me to Harvard\u000aSlavery still shapes our society.\u000aBy Sarah Browning\u000aWhen I say publicly that I\u2019m descended from slave owners, I almost always hear a gasp. I let the tension hang a moment and then I break it: \u201cWell, someone has to be, right?\u201d\u000aThis usually gets a laugh, or at least a humph of recognition. Because many of us white Americans are desperate to disassociate ourselves from one of the founding horrors of our nation\u2019s history: slavery.\u000a\u201cMy family didn\u2019t arrive until after the Civil War,\u201d some say. Or, \u201cWe were dirt poor.\u201d Or Northerners. And who can blame them? It\u2019s a profoundly shameful history.\u000aBut if we don\u2019t face that history squarely \u2014 and acknowledge the ways it still distorts the structure of our society today \u2014 we\u2019ll be incapable of undoing its legacy. White people will continue to believe that the extreme race-based wealth gap in this country has other causes \u2014 that they somehow deserve advantages denied to others based on their skin color.\u000aSo let me say it plainly: The unpaid labor of black people sent me to Harvard.\u000aMy great-grandfather was born into a slave-owning family in Virginia\u2019s Rappahannock County during the Civil War. Like most Americans who enslaved people, his family held onto their land and barely compensated the freed black workers who stayed on after the war ended.\u000aBy the time my grandfather turned 25 or so, around 1915, his father was able to buy him a farm in Culpeper, in central Virginia\u2019s fertile Piedmont region.\u000aJim Surkamp/Flickr\u000aIn the 1940s, my granddaddy started a real estate business. He bought up land surrounding Culpeper and put it into a trust for his grandchildren\u2019s education. When it was my turn to go to college, my land was sold for a bowling alley and a Baptist church, covering most of my tuition.\u000aMy grandfather worked incredibly hard all his life, but he had an enormous leg up compared to his black neighbors and employees \u2014 land he\u2019d been given by his father. And I inherited that advantage when I got a top-notch education at private schools and then attended an Ivy League university.\u000aMy story illustrates how the concentration of wealth in the hands of some folks and not others is perpetuated.\u000aOf course, all white Americans benefit from the privileges accorded to us solely by dint of our skin color.\u000aEven if your family came long after the Civil War, you can walk into a store and not be followed on suspicion of shoplifting. People won\u2019t choose to move away if you buy a house in their neighborhood. You don\u2019t worry every day that your son could be gunned down by the police.\u000aIt\u2019s grown harder to ignore how our black sisters and brothers are denied basic rights we whites take for granted every day. We witnessed the murders of Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner. We saw a white police officer violently subdue black teenagers at a McKinney, Texas pool party.\u000aAnd, motivated by an ideology of hate, a white man in Charleston, South Carolina murdered nine black churchgoers in a horrific terrorist attack \u2014 in a state that still flies the flag of slavery in its capital.\u000aHow do we begin to dismantle this oppressive system? Part of this process must be a reckoning, a truth-telling about how we arrived at this state of radical inequality. During this 150th anniversary of the Civil War\u2019s end, let\u2019s examine our history since that time. Let\u2019s set ourselves on a new path, one that begins to make amends.\u000aAt the very least, let\u2019s be honest with one another: My great-great grandparents may have taken your ancestors and held them as their property. It was a crime against humanity.\u000aSarah Browning is executive director of  Split This Rock  (splitthisrock.org) and an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.\u000aDistributed by OtherWords.org. \u000aTagged: charleston , college , history , racism , Slavery , south carolina , Texas , virginia , white privilege\u000aSharon Dennis Wyeth\u000aIn fact, my own grandfather was born and raised in Rappahanock County as well. But my grandfather was African American, a light skinned African American with blue eyes and the designation of \u201ccolored.\u201d He was the son of a man born into slavery and a free woman of color. I, too, went to Harvard yet it was not my grandparents\u2019 wealth or privileged position that got me there. It was drive born of thwarted entitlement fueled by rage that I inherited from both sides of my family without even knowing it. Tempered with tenacious love, their unrelenting work ethic and and hard won self worth are my legacy. So. allow me to add my voice to your own. It is quite possible that your ancestors once held a mortgage on one or more of my progenitors. We might even be related. But the route we two took to Harvard is through utterly different terrain. I\u2019m not sure why audiences gasp when they learn that you are descended from slave owners when there were so many.\u000aSharon Dennis Wyeth\u000asarahbrowning\u000aThank you, Sharon Dennis Wyeth, for your moving testimony. I think the gasps are because white people rarely speak it aloud, our shameful heritage. And rarely call our ancestors to account for the grievous wrong they perpetrated. It\u2019s just a start, truth telling, yes? But without it we cannot begin.\u000aMore\u000a
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VHow Would Francis Invest?\u000aHeed the pope\u2019s call to tread more lightly upon the Earth by making your money fossil-free.\u000aOriginally in OtherWords .\u000aPhoto: 350.org/Flickr\u000aWhen Pope Francis unveiled his letter to the world about how we must stop trashing the planet, he nearly broke the Internet.\u000aThe pithy document included hundreds of zingers, including this line: \u201cWhatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market.\u201d\u000aIn one sense, Francis is telling investors to stop worshiping money and start paying attention to how their actions can hurt the common good. In another, it\u2019s Pope to Wall Street: Drop Dead.\u000aSo far, no widespread soul-searching is visibly underway among the pinstriped set.\u000aFour and a half hours after the encyclical\u2019s release at noon in the Vatican \u2014 6 a.m. in Manhattan \u2014 the Associated Press reported : \u201cU.S. stocks moved higher in early trading Thursday, extending gains a day after the Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged from historically low levels.\u201d\u000aAs a former business reporter, I can translate. Wall Street to Pope: Whatevs.\u000aBut, wait, isn\u2019t this a turning point? Didn\u2019t the Vatican just awaken the powers that be, especially the Catholics among them, to the errors of their ways?\u000aSurely, I thought, millions of traders and brokers would get the memo once they\u2019d read about the pope\u2019s letter in the Financial Times. Not so much.\u000a\u201cU.S. stocks declined, after the Standard & Poor\u2019s 500 Index traded near a record, as energy stocks dropped with oil,\u201d Bloomberg reported the next day. The price of U.S.-drilled oil had ticked below the $60 a barrel mark due to expectations that production would again rise faster  than demand, not anything Francis said.\u000aTo be fair, the pope hasn\u2019t declared that investing in fossil fuels strikes him as a sin. Yet. Given that investors consider hedging a sacrament, I\u2019m sharing three basic How Would Francis Invest (HWFI) commandments as a public service.\u000aFirst: Thou shalt not buyeth or keepeth stocks or bonds of companies that despoil the Earth, especially in the oil, gas, and coal industries.\u000aSecond: Thou shalt invest as much money as thy holdings will allow in businesses that tread lightly upon the Earth, such as wind and solar power and energy efficiency.\u000aThird: Thou shalt encourage thy alma mater, local government, and any institution in which thou art a stakeholder to divest from fossil fuels and invest in climate solutions.\u000aBonus commandments:\u000aThou shalt reduce, reuse, and recycle.\u000aThou shalt not covet thy neighbor\u2019s Tesla.\u000aEven if you don\u2019t care about what the pope says about the environment or anything else, there\u2019s no basis for believing in the sanctity of fossil fuel companies. I\u2019ve learned firsthand that going fossil-free can yield good returns. And it\u2019s not as hard as you might think.\u000aGroups and campaigns like Green America , Divest Invest , Go Fossil Free , and As You Sow offer a wealth of practical tips. Plus, a growing number of large and small investment firms are helping investors meet Francis-friendly standards.\u000aTaking this step will protect you from  losses investors are incurring  from their ownership of oil, natural gas , and coal stocks and bonds and exposure to them through mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs).\u000aAt this point, people like me who are greening our portfolios can\u2019t take credit for the poor performance of fossil-fuel assets. In the short term, we\u2019re making more of a political and social impact. But that could change.\u000aIf the green-minded become fruitful and multiply, our grandchildren will be more likely to inherit an Earth capable of sustaining life as we know it.\u000a
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VOriginally in OtherWords .\u000aPhoto from: giulio napolitano / Shutterstock.com\u000aIf you visit the Franciscan Friars Conventual of Ellicott City, Maryland, you\u2019ll notice a large solar array standing in one of their fields. The friars have dramatically reduced their electricity bill, but that\u2019s not the primary reason they invested in renewable energy.\u000aAs Friar Michael Heine says, reducing their carbon footprint is \u201cthe right thing to do.\u201d\u000aFriar Heine\u2019s assertion is rooted in a tradition of caring for the environment \u2014 \u201cCreation care,\u201d as it\u2019s frequently called in Judeo-Christian communities. This theology got a big boost when Pope Francis released his encyclical on the environment, Praise Be You: On the Care of Our Common Home.\u000aEncyclicals are one of the highest levels of papal teaching, and this one focuses on the moral duty to care for our Earth. The pope devoted much of it to the challenge posed by climate change.\u000aEven though I\u2019m not Catholic, I\u2019m thrilled by what the Vatican is saying. Why? Because Pope Francis just made my job much easier.\u000aI work as the Maryland Program Associate for Interfaith Power & Light , a non-profit that helps faith communities save energy, go green, and respond to climate change. I have the privilege of supporting the great work that local faith communities like the friars outside Baltimore are doing to act on climate.\u000aThe biggest hurdle in my job isn\u2019t convincing people of the importance of climate action. It\u2019s simply raising awareness about climate change as a religious issue. Once we remind people that caring for the environment is a core part of theology and scripture, they get excited about doing what they can in their homes and places of worship to steward our Earth.\u000aBy putting climate change at the heart of his encyclical, Pope Francis is raising awareness about the importance of Creation care among the 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide, along with the many non-Catholics who are inspired by him. He reaches people in a way that no climate organization ever could.\u000aPope Francis is sending a strong message. Climate change, he says, \u201crepresents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day.\u201d\u000aWhen he says we have a \u201cduty to care for creation through little daily actions,\u201d that makes it much easier for people like me to help congregations switch to greener energy choices.\u000aWhat would our country look like if every house of worship ran on renewable energy, like the Franciscan Friars Conventual? My hope is that we all can unite behind Pope Francis\u2019s rallying call \u2014 Catholic and non-Catholic alike \u2014 since he prophetically states that the challenges of climate change \u201crequire a new and universal solidarity.\u201d\u000aNearly 100 Maryland congregations are getting their electricity from wind or solar power. It\u2019s time for the rest of the religious community to join in.\u000aClara Summers is currently a New Economy Maryland Fellow and works for Interfaith Power and Light as a member of the Episcopal Service Corps.\u000a
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VDismiss\u000aAttention\u000aThe browser or device you are using is out of date. It has known security flaws and a limited feature set. You will not see all the features of some websites. Please update your browser. A list of the most popular browsers can be found below.\u000a
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VOriginally in OtherWords .\u000aPhoto: Giulio Napolitano/Shutterstock\u000aPope Francis, the humble yet bold leader of the world\u2019s 1.2 billion Catholics, has offered an inspiring 21st century vision to all people. It\u2019s a vision that\u2019s been sorely missing in the halls of power.\u000aIn an encyclical focused on the environment, he details how we can save the planet while helping billions of the world\u2019s poor in this life \u2014 not just in heaven. The letter isn\u2019t for the faint-hearted. It\u2019s a wake-up call that if we continue fueling our lifestyles with oil, gas, and coal, we\u2019ll end life as we know it.\u000aHe asks us all to think and act big, to replace our dig, burn, and dump economy with one that creates dignified work for people who can rebuild our inner cities, retrofit our buildings to make them energy-efficient, and provide clean water and healthy food.\u000a\u201cWe need to strengthen the conviction that we are one single human family,\u201d he reminds us. \u201cThere are no frontiers or barriers, political or social, behind which we can hide.\u201d We all have a stake, therefore, in helping poorer nations leapfrog over dirty fossil-fuel industries and instead build their economies around green energy and energy efficiency.\u000aContrast this enlightened global vision with the one that\u2019s dominating political debate in Washington. Republicans have banded together with President Barack Obama behind a failed 20th century model of international economic rules that favors the wealthy and giant corporations over people and the planet.\u000aFor weeks, the White House pressed Congress to approve so-called Trade Promotion Authority \u2014 or \u201cfast track\u201d \u2014 which would facilitate passage of proposed trade agreements with 11 Asia-Pacific nations and the European Union.\u000aThese deals don\u2019t make trade \u201cfreer.\u201d Trade already occurs with almost no impediments. Instead, these pacts will make it harder to carry out Pope Francis\u2019s vision by restricting the authority of governments around the world to regulate large corporations.\u000aIn particular, these accords will empower corporations to sue governments over policies that purportedly threaten their investments. This could include laws designed to protect the Earth and ensure that it\u2019s around for future generations to enjoy.\u000aMy plea to members of Congress is this: Abandon the failed trade model of the 20thcentury. Instead of Trade Promotion Authority, we need \u201cPeople and Planet Promotion Authority.\u201d\u000aThis would end the outrageous subsidies Congress gives fossil fuel corporations \u2014 and shift these funds to the small and medium businesses that pay people a living wage to build a fossil-free economy. It would fairly tax Wall Street, the wealthy, and corporations to pay for this green transition. And it would launch a deliberate effort to spur the growth of wind, solar, and other renewable alternatives.\u000aThe voices of corporate lobbyists have prevailed long enough in Washington. As Pope Francis has warned us, it\u2019s time to listen to \u201cthe cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor.\u201d\u000aJohn Cavanagh is the director of the Institute for Policy Studies.\u000a
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VInequality Blog\u000aRed Herring in the Inequality Debate\u000aIt sounds crazy, but a major distraction in our debate about inequality in America today is inequality itself.\u000aJune 19, 2015\u000a.\u000aIt sounds crazy, but a major distraction in our debate about inequality in America today is inequality itself.\u000aI\u2019m referring here to the concept of inequality in the abstract. The overwhelming majority of Americans believe inequality is necessary to a well-functioning society. Without inequality, the logic goes, there would be insufficient incentives for hard work, innovation, and education.\u000aOnce this frame of logic enters the debate, it\u2019s hard to move beyond it. Current levels of inequality do get aired, but the discussion often gets mired in questions of relative morality. Yes, $100 billion is a ton of wealth for one family, the Waltons, to control, but what about all those savings their business model brought to tens of millions of Americans? From that perspective, is it unfair?\u000aOn top of that, there\u2019s an emotional distraction. Many Americans who are not super-rich themselves nonetheless dream of being super-rich one day. To them, inequality is not only necessary; it\u2019s beneficial.\u000aWant to remove these distractions from the debate?\u000aThen approach our current level of inequality or, to use a less distracting term, our current level of wealth and income concentration, from the other direction.\u000aUnder this approach, the starting point in the discussion would be: Is there any level of wealth and income concentration that would be destructive to our society?\u000aAnd the answer? Yes, of course there is. If one family held all the country\u2019s wealth, our nation as a whole would be worse off. Note how this question overcomes the emotional pull in the inequality debate. While it is common for people to see themselves as future one percenters, no family with a last name other than Koch would delude themselves into believing they could one day control all the country\u2019s wealth.\u000aNext question: At some point, does increasing concentration of wealth and income become destructive to our society?\u000aThe answer again must be yes, based only on the answer to the first question. For example, if America were at the point where two families held all of our wealth, further wealth concentration would be undesirable, since we\u2019ve already established that one family controlling all the country\u2019s wealth is undesirable.\u000aNext question: Once we reach the point at which further concentration of wealth and income become destructive, should we implement measures to ensure that further concentration does not occur\u000aAgain, the answer must be yes, with no explanation needed.\u000aAnd, finally, has America already reached the point at which measures should be implemented to prevent further concentration of wealth and income?\u000aEssentially, we\u2019ve now arrived back at the question whether one family should control $100 billion of wealth, but it\u2019s no longer about the Waltons. And the data is overwhelming.\u000aCitizens for Tax Justice reported that in 2012, twelve percent of all capital gains income reported by American taxpayers went to just 400 taxpayers.\u000aOn April 24, 2015, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimated that the ten wealthiest Americans now are worth, collectively, half a trillion dollars. The actual number is around $499 billion, but to these folks a billion dollars is no more than a rounding error.\u000aBased on research by leading economist Emmanuel Saez, it was widely reported that between 2009 and 2012, 95% of the income gains in America went to the top one percent.\u000aAnd there you have it. In order to understand inequality in America, don\u2019t think about inequality.\u000aBob Lord is an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.\u000a
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VWhat Caused the Charleston Massacre?\u000aRelentless racism and a powerful anti-gun control lobby make for a deadly combination.\u000aOriginally in OtherWords .\u000aPhoto: a katz/Shutterstock\u000aThe recent mass murder of worshippers in an African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina raises troubling questions for all Americans. First among them: How could this have happened?\u000aI think the answer to that one is easy.\u000aWe live in a heavily armed society. And hundreds of groups in our country still openly proselytize violence against people of color and other minorities.\u000aSo perhaps a better question is, how could this not have happened?\u000aMost Americans were outraged in December 2012 when a mentally ill teenager murdered 26 people \u2014 including 20 first-graders \u2014 in an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. What happened afterward?\u000aAlmost nothing. President Barack Obama signed a handful of executive orders calling for background checks for gun purchasers, but Congress rejected new federal legislation to restrict guns. Indeed, in the year after the shootings, over 20 states passed 70 laws that actually relaxed gun restrictions.\u000aIt was a familiar script even then.\u000aJust a few months before the Newtown shooting, a deranged man had opened fire in a packed movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, killing 12 people and wounding 70 . Gun sales spiked after the shootings \u2014 not just in Colorado, but in the surrounding states as well.\u000aCharleston is even more disturbing, for a variety of reasons. Dylann Roof, who allegedly carried out the attack, didn\u2019t just perpetrate a mass shooting against people in a house of prayer. He committed an act of terrorism.\u000aThis wasn\u2019t just a case of a lunatic opening fire in a public place. Roof had a political agenda: He told friends he wanted to attack the church to start a new civil war. He specifically meant to kill black Americans. That makes this case different.\u000aBy all accounts , Roof grew up in an environment that espoused and encouraged racism. His Facebook page was full of racist rants. Friends recalled that he frequently told racist jokes and made racist comments. He was \u201cbig into segregation,\u201d according to his roommate.\u000aWhy didn\u2019t these friends stop him or report him? Maybe it\u2019s because of a racist subculture that still exists in the southern United States.\u000aRacist groups can crop up anywhere in America, but they especially thrive in the South. Roof named one of them \u2014 the Council of Conservative Citizens \u2014 as a particularly important influence on his racist worldview.\u000aThis racist group came out of the defunct White Citizens\u2019 Councils of the 1950s and 1960s. Despite its unsavory roots and its openly white supremacist ideology, many southern politicians still pander to the organization .\u000aFor example, Republican presidential candidate and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee delivered a keynote address to a Council of Conservative Citizens convention in 1993. High-ranking GOP members of Congress, including Senator Trent Lott and Representative Bob Barr, also addressed the group around that time.\u000aIts leader, Earl Holt, has donated over $65,000 to Republican politicians in recent years, including GOP presidential candidates Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Rick Santorum.\u000aOur elected leaders must make a stand. They must condemn not just racism, but racist groups they may consider a part of their base. They must have nothing to do with groups that espouse separation of the races. And they must allow the Confederate flag, that most obvious symbol of racism, to fade into history.\u000aThere\u2019s no easy way to move on after an atrocity like the Charleston massacre. But this much is clear: Out-of-control racism and a staunch anti-gun control lobby make for a lethal combination. Unless both of these deadly forces are disarmed, Charleston won\u2019t be the last bloody tragedy we ruefully remember.\u000aJohn Kiriakou is an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.\u000a
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VBy John Kiriakou\u000aI\u2019ve gotten a lot of unwelcome mail from the feds these last few years, like a copy of my indictment for blowing the whistle on the CIA\u2019s torture program. But this latest delivery was something altogether new.\u000aMy jaw dropped as I scanned the form letter from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) informing me of a \u201ccybersecurity incident.\u201d Hackers, reportedly from China, had worked their way into the U.S. government\u2019s computers and stolen personal information related to every single federal employee  who ever filled out an application.\u000aI left government in 2011 after serving two years with OPM, 14 years with the CIA, and two years with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I\u2019m one of millions of government workers, past and present, whose personal data \u2014 including Social Security numbers \u2014 was compromised.\u000aOPM said it would generously pay for 18 months of identity theft insurance. Thanks a lot, Uncle Sam.\u000aI don\u2019t much care if the Chinese know that I\u2019m a former CIA officer. It\u2019s no secret. I published a bestselling book about my years at the CIA. I give interviews in the press and on TV speaking out against torture. I lecture at colleges and universities about ethics in intelligence operations.\u000aBut the information the Chinese stole included my original application to the CIA \u2014 my Standard Form 86. That form included information on my family members, friends, neighbors, and references. That means their information was probably compromised too.\u000aIngrid Richter/Flickr\u000aMultiply these breaches millions of times, and that\u2019s a major snafu.\u000aSo where were our federal law enforcement agencies? Why weren\u2019t they protecting us? I think I can tell you.\u000aWhile the hackers were worming their way into government workers\u2019 personal data, the Justice Department was busy targeting scientist Nancy Black of Monterey, California.\u000aBlack was a marine biologist accused of \u201c interfering with the feeding of a wild animal \u201d \u2014 a felony. She\u2019d allegedly whistled at a whale during a whale watching tour she offered to tourists on her boat. After spending thousands on legal fees, she finally pled guilty to a misdemeanor count of violating the Marine Mammal Act.\u000aShe avoided a possible 27-year prison sentence, but still ended up paying a fine of $12,500.\u000aThe Justice Department was also vigorously prosecuting John Yates, who captained a fishing boat in the Gulf of Mexico. A U.S. fisheries official had told Yates to keep any undersized fish he caught separate from larger fish. Instead, Yates threw the smaller fish back into the water, hoping to avoid a fine .\u000aHis reward? He was charged with a felony count of violating the Sarbanes-Oxley Act \u2014 a federal law written in 2002 to prevent accounting firms from destroying or falsifying documents. Government lawyers twisted that statute to prosecute Yates for throwing fish in the wrong place.\u000aYates fought his case all the way to the Supreme Court. He won , but not before spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money to defend himself. The Justice Department likely spent millions pursuing and then defending the case.\u000aMeanwhile, the Chinese were hacking our systems.\u000aPicking low-hanging fruit like workers who make mistakes or non-violent drug offenders is a favored tactic of the department. It bankrupts the defendants and forces them to take plea deals, even on lousy charges.\u000aIt\u2019s time for the Justice Department to get its act together: Stop targeting hardworking Americans and start protecting the American people.\u000aOtherWords columnist John Kiriakou is an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. He\u2019s a former CIA counterterrorism officer and former senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  OtherWords.org .\u000a
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VBy Martha Burk\u000aYou probably think you know about all the taxes you pay. Income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes \u2014 it seems like the list is endless. But there\u2019s one tax I\u2019ve been paying for most of my life that you might not know about. If you\u2019re a woman, chances are you\u2019re paying it too.\u000aIt\u2019s called the pink tax.\u000aWhat is it? It\u2019s the premium you pay for goods and services that are marketed to women, even when they\u2019re identical to those sold as \u201cmen\u2019s\u201d products at a cheaper price. One study calculated this \u201ctax\u201d at an extra $1,400 a year.\u000amimolag/Flickr\u000aYou\u2019ll find a lot of these items in drugstores \u2014 stuff like razors, deodorants, wrinkle creams, shaving creams, even pain killers. The pink tax also creeps in at dry cleaners , where a plain women\u2019s white shirt often costs more than a man\u2019s shirt, which is usually bigger and made from longer-lasting fabric.\u000aHigh-end products are no exception. Manufacturers of scents charge less for men\u2019s cologne than they do for ladies\u2019 perfume \u2014 even though the ingredients are the same. Women\u2019s plus-sized clothing costs more than the regular sizes. If you think it\u2019s because more fabric is used, think again: Men\u2019s plus sizes cost about the same as the smaller sizes.\u000aIt\u2019s easy to see for yourself.\u000aResearchers for Mic.com sampled a handful of common drugstore products . They found pink razors for $12.49, while blue razors from the same brand ran just $10.99. Women\u2019s deodorant was $4.99. Men\u2019s, only $3.29. And even though Excedrin Complete Menstrual contains the same ingredients as Excedrin Extra Strength, that \u201cM\u201d word costs half a buck extra for the same size bottle.\u000aTwenty years ago, California did a study that uncovered lots of this gendered pricing, leading to a statute that outlawed the practice. But no other states followed suit, so women in the other 49 could be stuck paying more.\u000aThere\u2019s one bit of good news. Before the Affordable Care Act, health insurance companies could and did charge women more for the exact same coverage men got. And not because of maternity coverage \u2014 that often wasn\u2019t included in the policies at all. When Obamacare passed, sex discrimination in health insurance pricing became illegal.\u000aBut the pink tax is still very much alive. A nickel here and 50 cents there adds up to over a thousand bucks a year for the typical female shopper. And that\u2019s real money.\u000aMartha Burk is the director of the Corporate Accountability Project for the National Council of Women\u2019s Organizations (NCWO) and the author of the  book  Your Voice, Your Vote: The Savvy Woman\u2019s Guide to Power, Politics, and the Change We Need. Follow Martha on twitter @ MarthaBurk .\u000a
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VBrown Bag: Inside Syria »\u000aElection season looms and the Presidential campaign seems destined to be as contentious, as misleading and as confusing as ever. In Sixteen for \u201916 , Salvatore Babones takes the politics out of policy, bringing the debate back to the issues that matter in a new, clear and unified agenda for the 2016 elections.\u000aDecades of destructive social and economic policies have devastated poor, working, and middle-class American communities. It is now clear that harsh austerity does not bring prosperity, that the wealthy have no intention of seeing their wealth trickle down, and that each generation is no longer better off than the ones that came before. But what to do?\u000aJoin the Institute for Policy Studies , USAction , and Busboys and Poets for this talk and book\u000asigning with IPS Associate Fellow and Associate Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney, Salvatore Babones , as in this progressive election field manual, he outlines sixteen core principles to combat these entrenched problems. America needs jobs, infrastructure, a rededication to public education, universal healthcare, higher taxes on higher incomes, a more secure Social Security, an end to the rule of the bankers, stronger unions, a living minimum wage, better working conditions, an end to the prison state, secure reproductive rights, voter equality,\u000aa more moral foreign policy, a more humane refugee policy, and action on global warming.\u000aThe progressive movement is on the march in America, and this accessible book charts a realistic path toward a destination all can believe in: a better tomorrow.\u000aSixteen for \u201916 has a foreword by IPS Director, John Cavanagh , who will be MC for this event with respondents Fred Azcarate , Executive Director for USAction and Karen Dolan , Director of IPS\u2019 Criminalization of Poverty project.\u000a
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VBy Deb Nardone\u000aHere\u2019s the good news: President Barack Obama has committed to reducing the nation\u2019s greenhouse gas emissions by at least 17 percent by 2020. The bad news? A rise in fracking for natural gas could make the United States fail to keep this pledge.\u000aUnfortunately, a big corporate push to start exporting liquefied natural gas, or LNG, could ramp up fracking even further. When it comes to creating the pollution that leads to climate disruption, scientists say fracked LNG is on par with coal , which has long held the mantle as the dirtiest fuel around.\u000aBut there\u2019s more than just climate to worry about. Exporting natural gas also threatens our air, water, and health.\u000aThat\u2019s because it requires massive pipelines and other infrastructure to transport the fracked gas, liquefy it, and then store, load, and transport it by ship to foreign markets. Much of this infrastructure is located in ecologically sensitive areas or near homes, schools, and urban areas.\u000aNo wonder communities along the East and West coasts alike are trying to block the construction of these large industrial facilities. In late May alone, hundreds turned out at rallies and marches everywhere from the Cove Point facility in Lusby, Maryland to the statehouse in Salem, Oregon.\u000a. Shell/Flickr\u000aShipping fracked gas overseas would inflict damage hundreds of miles away from the new LNG-export terminals, since most of the gas sold to foreign markets would be drilled elsewhere. That would increase the air, water, and climate pollution already impacting gas-producing regions of America.\u000aPeople living near fracked gas wells in Pennsylvania, for example, are suffering from increased air pollution and associated public health risks like respiratory and neurological disease, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection found.\u000aMany rural communities in the West, meanwhile, put up with air that\u2019s dirtier than in downtown Los Angeles . And homeowners in frontline fracking towns like Pavilion, Wyoming are finding toxic, cancer-causing chemicals in their drinking water.\u000aThe damage to air quality and public health will increase as more wells are drilled to meet foreign demand.\u000aFederal agencies have drastically understated the true environmental and public health cost of natural gas production. In fact, only one state \u2014 New York \u2014 has conducted a cumulative environmental and public health analysis to understand the effects of drilling and fracking near communities. Based on that study, Albany banned hydraulic fracturing statewide.\u000aYet other states and the federal government are barreling into long-term energy decisions and making deals with foreign buyers. There\u2019s little accountability for the damage fracking for exported gas will do over here.\u000aThe American public has nothing to gain if even just one LNG export terminal moves forward \u2014 and the one at Cove Point is slated to become the first by late 2017.\u000aAs a nation, we have a decision to make: We can invest trillions of dollars to sustain fossil fuel industries that leave a legacy of pollution, or we can speed up the transition to relying on greener energy sources like wind and solar power.\u000aDeb Nardone is the director of the Sierra Club\u2019s Beyond Natural Gas Campaign.\u000aDistributed by OtherWords.org. \u000aTagged: cove point , fracking , LNG , maryland , Natural Gas , new york state , pennsylvania , Public Health , wyoming\u000aMac Hoban (Tasmania)\u000aNot to mention the vast cloud of methane that fracking is releasing into the atmosphere. Methane that is a greenhouse gas of many times more potency than CO2. Gas obtained by fracking is spectactularly dirty and destructive.\u000aDFinMOzarks\u000aWhat\u2019s just as noxious to me is that these companies plunder our resources, don\u2019t clean up the mess they make, don\u2019t pay the US taxpayers or US government anything for the gas or oil they dig up, they aren\u2019t responding to lawsuits from those who\u2019s groundwater has been grossly polluted and now they sell their plunder to foreign countries ahead of US consumers resulting in shortages here.\u000aSure, I\u2019d like to see us reduce our dependence on LNG, propane and other fossil fuels more expeditiously but if that\u2019s not in the cards because alternatives aren\u2019t able to make up the difference, at least make these folks pay for what they take off property owned by the US government (that\u2019s US) when they ship these resources overseas where they presumably get more more for them.\u000aMore\u000a
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VForeign Policy In Focus\u000aOur Refugee World\u000aThere are more refugees adrift in the world today than ever before. If they formed a country, it would be the 24th most populous on the planet.\u000aThe number of Syrian refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) already rivals the scale of the displaced in countries like Afghanistan and Somalia, which have endured much longer-running conflicts. (Photo: UNHCR Photo Unit / Flickr)\u000aTo paraphrase William Gibson, the post-apocalypse is already here \u2014 it\u2019s just not evenly distributed.\u000aMany of our post-apocalyptic stories \u2014 Mad Max, The Road, World War Z \u2014 feature desperate people on the move in a friendless and resource-poor environment. The world hasn\u2019t ended quite yet, but these modern nomads have nearly lost hope. Something terrible has happened in the past, and the future looks no less bleak. They are propelled, often without volition, from tragedy to tragedy. It\u2019s an endless series of frying pans and fires.\u000aThat\u2019s \u201creality\u201d at the Cineplex. Unfortunately, it looks a lot like the reality of a refugee.\u000aLike the movie denizens of the dystopian future, today\u2019s refugees are fleeing the end of their worlds and hoping to find safe haven somewhere else. The odds are long. Just ask the border guards.\u000aAccording to the latest UN report , we face an unprecedented refugee crisis. Nearly 60 million people are now classified as refugees, more than at any time since such records have been kept. Perhaps our civilization won\u2019t end with a bang or a whimper. We\u2019ll all simply become, failed state after failed state, refugees in a heartless world.\u000aThe Depressing Numbers\u000aEvery day, 45,000 people slip into the post-apocalyptic world of refugeedom. Every month, the equivalent of a San Diego joins the surplus army of the dispossessed. In 2014 alone, 14 million people became refugees. More than half of all refugees are under the age of 18 . I can\u2019t think of better way to prepare the next generation of angry, anti-state terrorists.\u000aHere\u2019s the most depressing statistic of them all. Of the 14.4 million people displaced from their countries, only 126,800 of them returned to those countries in 2014. That\u2019s less than 1 percent, the lowest percentage of return in over 30 years.\u000aThe nearly 60 million refugees include the internally displaced, but not economic migrants or those who fled because of natural disaster. War and the collapse of states have been the primary sources of the crisis. According to The Washington Post :\u000aThe four-year-old war in Syria has been the single biggest driver of the surging numbers. Last year, 1 in 5 displaced persons worldwide was Syrian. The country in 2014 became the planet\u2019s largest source of refugees, displacing Afghanistan, which had held that dubious distinction for three decades.\u000aSyria is the epicenter of the crisis. But it\u2019s by no means the only problem region. There are still nearly 3 million internally displaced people in Iraq. The Rohingya are streaming out of Burma. Nearly a million Ukrainians have left their country and over a million more are internally displaced. There are 6 million internally displaced in Colombia. Nearly 300,000 Pakistanis fled their country for Afghanistan. South Sudan witnessed the internal displacement of 1.5 million and an outflow of half a million.\u000aIf refugees formed a country, it would be the 24th most populous in the world, between South Africa and Italy.\u000aPoor on Poor\u000aRefugees usually make it into the headlines only when they try to storm the ramparts of the developed world. Only when hundreds of thousands of refugees have tried to bust their way into Europe, by boat across the Mediterranean, does the continent acknowledge a crisis \u2014 and then only begrudgingly.\u000aEven though the refugee statistics for 2013 were almost as overwhelming as those of 2014, the issue didn\u2019t hit the media in a big way until the EU engaged in an epic fail. French journalist Sylvie Kauffman describes the tragedy as it developed this spring:\u000aFinding land borders locked, refugees had taken to the sea. Overwhelmed and frustrated by a lack of European solidarity, Italy had ended its Mediterranean rescue mission in December. Suddenly, the human tragedy was there for all Europeans to see: rickety boats capsizing every day; refugees drowning by the hundreds. So far this year, at least 1,868 people have died or disappeared in the Mediterranean, compared with 448 in the same period last year.\u000aBut as the UN report makes clear, the burden has not fallen on Europe or the United States. Consider the example of Syrian refugees. The United States, since the war began in that country, has taken in 700 unfortunates out of approximately 4 million. No, that\u2019s not a typographical mistake. The Obama administration is willing to push the number up to 2,000 by this fall. But, according to The Washington Post , \u201cthe plan is stirring pushback from Republican lawmakers in Congress, who are increasingly vocal about the fear that terrorists may sneak in with the refugees.\u201d\u000aThe rich have not stepped up to the plate. Rather, it\u2019s largely the poor who shoulder the responsibility of dealing with refugees. The developing world hosts 9 out of 10 refugees. The top host countries , in terms of the number of refugees per capita, are Lebanon, Jordan, Nauru, Chad, Djibouti, South Sudan, Turkey, and Mauritania. Only when you get to the ninth place on the list does a truly rich country appear: Sweden.\u000aFor all the xenophobic invective from politicians in Europe and the United States, their countries only dip their toes into the crisis. In general, it\u2019s the tired, poor, and wretched who are taking care of the tired, poor, and wretched. Emma Lazarus would weep.\u000aPost-apocalyptic films reflect a collective anxiety that the developed world can fall easily into the pell-mell war of all against all. We\u2019re all just one natural disaster away from hell on earth \u2014 just ask the denizens of New Orleans during the Katrina crisis or the Japanese near the site of the Fukushima meltdown. First comes the taste of internal displacement. Then comes the breakdown of all order. The poor and the war weary can tell us all about it.\u000aEnter the Pope\u000aRefugees don\u2019t vote. What little money they once had has gone to pay the coyotes and the traffickers that facilitated their escape. With no power or voice, they elicit little interest from the economically and politically powerful. They are truly the most disenfranchised people on earth.\u000aIt\u2019s no surprise, then, that Pope Francis has singled them out for special attention.\u000aIn 2013, in his first official trip outside Rome as the new pope, Francis visited Lampedusa, a tiny island off of Sicily. There he held a mass to call attention to the thousands who had died in attempting the crossing from Africa to Europe. He railed against what he called the \u201cglobalization of indifference.\u201d\u000aIn his latest encyclical devoted to the dangers of climate change, Pope Francis made sure to address the impact of the growing environmental crisis on refugees:\u000aThere has been a tragic rise in the number of migrants seeking to flee from the growing poverty caused by environmental degradation. They are not recognized by international conventions as refugees; they bear the loss of the lives they have left behind, without enjoying any legal protection whatsoever. Sadly, there is widespread indifference to such suffering, which is even now taking place throughout our world. Our lack of response to these tragedies involving our brothers and sisters points to the loss of that sense of responsibility for our fellow men and women upon which all civil society is founded.\u000aAt some point, the number of refugees fleeing drought, soil erosion, rising waters, and the like will rival the refugees of war. But the refugees of war can go to peaceful countries and hope that one day the conflicts in their own countries will subside. In a world transformed by climate change, where can the environmental refugees go?\u000aSearching for Solidarity\u000aWe take care of our own, or so the saying goes. The luckiest refugees have families to welcome them in. Sometimes the dispossessed can find refuge among fellow nationals: in the Syrian community in Turkey, the Somali community in Kenya, the Ukrainian community in Poland. Co-religionists provide shelter through churches, synagogues, mosques.\u000aBut the current refugee crisis has overwhelmed these traditional bonds of solidarity. Family, nation, and religion no longer provide sufficient sanctuary. Indifference, as the pope has stressed, is global. Solidarity must similarly go global. The richer half of the globe must open its doors at least to the extent that the poorer half already has. Simply put, we have the resources to do so. We just don\u2019t have the will.\u000aIt goes without saying that to reduce the number of refugees in any significant way will require addressing the roots of the crisis: the wars, the persecutions, the unchecked climate change. But that\u2019s a function of money, diplomacy, and policy.\u000aThe pope is getting at something else \u2014 our loss of responsibility for our neighbors irrespective of who they are and how they might relate to us. They are humans, the pope reminds us. That\u2019s all we need to know.\u000aJohn Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus.\u000a
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VBy Jim Naureckas\u000aCNN hopes its \u201ctrustworthiness\u201d will get corporations to pay it to make \u201cnews-like content\u201d that will \u201ctell advertisers\u2019 stories.\u201d (CNN screen grab: Daily Buzz )\u000aCNN has announced the formation of a new unit that will not report the news. Instead, it will take money from corporations to produce content that resembles news but is actually PR designed to burnish its clients\u2019 images.\u000aThe name CNN gives to this mercenary enterprise? \u201cCourageous.\u201d\u000aIt\u2019s hard to see what\u2019s particularly courageous about CNN\u2018s move, even if you see the destruction of journalistic boundaries as a heroic struggle. As a report about CNN\u2018s foray into \u201cnews-like content on behalf of advertisers\u201d on a Wall Street Journal marketing blog ( 6/8/15 ) notes, \u201cnews companies from the New York Times to BuzzFeed to the Wall Street Journal have units that create advertiser content.\u201d\u000aPerhaps CNN anticipates courageously withstanding ethical criticism. As the Journal\u2018s Steven Perlberg notes, \u201cThese undertakings often raise church-and-state questions about the divide between the editorial and business sides of a company\u201d\u2013understandably, since the point of so-called native advertising is to create advertising vehicles \u201cthat feel like editorial work.\u201d\u000aBut CNN\u2018s parent company insists that this is not about fooling consumers:\u000a\u201cThis isn\u2019t about confusing editorial with advertising,\u201d said Dan Riess, executive vice president of integrated marketing and branded content at Turner. \u201cThis is about telling advertisers\u2019 stories \u2014 telling similar stories but clearly labeling that and differentiating that.\u201d\u000aMr. Riess said CNN\u2019s trustworthiness when it comes to news was part of the reason Courageous would be attractive to advertisers.\u000a\u201cThis is CNN. We\u2019re not here to blur the lines,\u201d he said.\u000aSo advertisers will come to Courageous because CNN\u2018s \u201ctrustworthiness\u201d and unwillingness to \u201cblur the lines\u201d will be transfered by viewers to advertising content that is \u201csimilar\u201d to CNN\u2018s news but \u201cclearly label[ed] and differentiat[ed].\u201d This is a business strategy, of course, that only works if the similarity outweighs the differentiation.\u000aJim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org.\u000aMessages to CNN can be sent to  here  (or via Twitter  @CNN ). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.\u000a \u000a
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VThe New York Times\u2018 vision of women in the workplace. (Anna Parini)\u000aFamiliar, frustrating construction from today\u2019s New York Times ( 5/26/15 ):\u000aIt turns out that generous maternity leave and flexible rules on part-time work can make it harder for women to be promoted \u2014 or even hired at all.\u000aThat\u2019s one way to put it, and the article, by \u201cWomen at Work\u201d columnist Claire Cain Miller, puts it that way repeatedly. Women are paid less in Chile as a \u201cresult\u201d of the law that requires employers to provide childcare for working mothers. Maternity leave measures \u201chave meant that\u201d European women are less likely to achieve powerful positions at work. Policies intended to mitigate the penalty women pay for their traditional \u201cdual burden,\u201d the Times says, \u201cend up discouraging employers from hiring women in the first place.\u201d\u000aThe workplace repression of women is described as the \u201cunintended\u201d impact of family-friendly policies. Sure, such impacts weren\u2019t intended by the policies\u2019 drafters, but that makes it sound as though there were no conscious human beings behind decisions to pay working mothers less or not to hire women. It isn\u2019t the policies that \u201cmake it harder\u201d for women, but the male-centric management structure\u2019s unwillingness to integrate those policies into the way work is done. Why not say that?\u000aThe Times suggests it might be better if employers didn\u2019t have to pay for policies that make it possible for caregivers to earn a living, or maybe they should be \u201cgenerous but not too generous.\u201d\u000aFinally, it floats the idea that making family-supportive measures gender-neutral might alleviate some of employers\u2019 punitive responses. This at least starts to broach some of the societal questions\u2014like the idea of making workplaces that support family and community life, rather than the other way around\u2014that, in a better world, might form the starting point for such an article.\u000a \u000aYou can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com , or to public editor Margaret Sullivan at public@nytimes.com . Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.\u000aRelated\u000a
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VUSA Today (6/3/15) had a five-column headline across the top of its front page:\u000aNSA Data Collection Ended\u000aThat would be odd, since the National Security Agency exists to collect data; it\u2019s unlikely that a $10 billion agency would simply stop everything it was doing.\u000aWhat the headline means to say is that the NSA has ended what the story calls its \u201ccontroversial bulk collection of the phone data of millions of Americans who have no ties to terrorism.\u201d But that\u2019s not really true either. For one thing, while the headline says that the phone data collection program has ended, the vote the headline is reporting actually restarted it. While the NSA says it ended the collection of bulk metadata at the end of May in accordance with a sunset provision in the original Patriot Act, the USA Freedom Act authorizes the the agency to begin collecting it again over what USA Today calls a six-month \u201cwind down\u201d period \u201cto give the NSA and phone companies\u2026time to switch over the data collection to the phone companies.\u201d\u000aAnd that points to a bigger problem with declaring that the NSA\u2019s data collection has \u201cended\u201d: The same data will still be collected, only it will be held in phone company computers rather than the NSA\u2019s computers. The NSA will still have access to the data, only having to get an OK from the FISA court\u2013a notorious rubberstamp that operates in secret. As NSA whistleblower J. Kirk Wiebe told FAIR, \u201cIt\u2019s more of a psychological maneuver to make us all feel good than a true constraint.\u201d\u000aWiebe notes that the phone metadata collection program addressed by the USA Freedom Act is the tip of the iceberg as far as NSA data collection is concerned\u2013pointing, for example, to Executive Order 12333, which authorizes the NSA to \u201ccollect, retain, or disseminate information concerning United States persons\u201d when it is \u201cobtained in the course of a lawful foreign intelligence, counterintelligence, international narcotics or international terrorism investigation\u201d (Ars Technica, 8/27/14 ). This is used to capture vast amounts of US communication\u2013not metadata, but the actual content of phone calls and emails\u2013under the pretense that this surveillance of US citizens is \u201cincidental\u201d to the NSA\u2019s legal mission of foreign surveillance. As Glenn Greenwald documents in his book Nowhere to Hide, the NSA is not kidding with its unofficial motto \u201c Collect It All .\u201d\u000aWhile some civil liberties groups supported the USA Freedom Act as a modest step in the right direction, others were less sanguine. \u201cThe Senate just voted to reinstitute certain lapsed surveillance authorities \u2014 and that means that USA Freedom actually made Americans less free,\u201d declared Demand Progress executive director David Segal, saying that the bill \u201cdoes not end mass surveillance and could be interpreted by the Executive branch as authorizing activities the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has found to be unlawful.\u201d He called on Congress \u201cto achieve far-reaching, meaningful changes to surveillance programs, and\u2026assert America\u2019s strong commitment to constitutional rights.\u201d\u000aThat\u2019s not likely to happen, of course, so long as major news outlets are telling Americans that NSA data collection has \u201cended.\u201d\u000aJim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org.\u000aMessages to USA Today can be sent here  or via Twitter ( @USAToday ). Remember that respectful communication is the most effective.\u000aHear Sue Udry of the Defending Dissent Foundation discuss the USA Freedom Act on the June 5, 2015, CounterSpin .\u000aRelated\u000aFiled Under: Blog , zHome , zMail Tagged With: USA Today\u000aFacebook Likes\u000a
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VMP3 Link\u000aThis week on CounterSpin: Are banks that are too big to fail, and too big to jail, too big to surveil? You\u2019d get that impression from corporate media\u2019s subdued reaction to the Justice Department announcement that five major banks would plead guilty to felony charges, including price-rigging. Some major papers spilled some ink, but most went with a wire piece emphasizing the $5 billion the banks will supposedly \u201cfork over\u201d for what the DoJ termed \u201cbrazen\u201d criminality, and called it a day. Are media reacting to a not-especially-meaningful ruling, or are they dangerously indifferent to questions of criminal banks? We\u2019ll hear from Bartlett Naylor, financial policy advocate at the group Public Citizen, and former chief of investigations for the US Senate Banking Committee.\u000aAlso on the show: The whistleblower is on the front line of the conflict between powerful institutions\u2019 desire to keep secrets and democracy\u2019s requirement that people be well-informed, especially of actions taken in their name. Protecting whistleblowers from persecution is one driving idea behind the international Stand Up for Truth tour slated for early June. One of the participants is retired FBI agent-turned-political activist Coleen Rowley. We\u2019ll talk with her about that.\u000aAnd first, as usual, we\u2019ll take a look back at the week\u2019s press, including an undercovered story about the NBA and police violence.\u000aLINKS:\u000a
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VBy Jim Naureckas\u000aThe New York Times reports that Bernie Sanders is drawing large crowds in Iowa\u2013but warns that Iowans may find him \u201cunelectable.\u201d  (photo: Ryan Hendrikson/NYT)\u000aReporting on the large crowds attracted by Sen. Bernie Sanders\u2019 presidential campaign in Iowa, the New York Times\u2018 Trip Gabriel and Patrick Healy ( 5/31/15 ) stressed that former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is \u201cfar ahead in the polls, fundraising and name recognition,\u201d and added:\u000aHer mix of centrist and progressive Democratic views may yet prove more appealing to the broadest number of party voters as well, while some of Mr. Sanders\u2019 policy prescriptions \u2014 including far higher taxes on the wealthy and deep military spending cuts \u2014 may eventually persuade Democrats that he is unelectable in a general election.\u000aIt sounds like it\u2019s the New York Times that\u2019s hoping to persuade Democrats that Sanders is unelectable.\u000aAs we\u2019ve noted (FAIR Blog, 4/20/15 ), the idea of raising the taxes of the rich is quite popular with the US public. Gallup has been asking folks since 1992 how they feel about how much \u201cupper-income people\u201d pay in taxes, and 18 times in a row a solid majority has said the rich pay too little. For the past four years, either 61 or 62 percent have said the wealthy don\u2019t pay enough; it\u2019s hard to figure why Iowans would conclude that Sanders is \u201cunelectable\u201d because he takes the same position on tax hikes for the wealthy as three out of every five Americans.\u000aMeanwhile, the position that upper-income people pay too little in taxes has never been endorsed by more than 15 percent of Gallup respondents\u2014and it\u2019s usually 10 percent or less. Yet you won\u2019t see the New York Times declaring Republican candidates \u201cunelectable\u201d for advocating tax cuts for the wealthy.\u000aCutting the military budget isn\u2019t as popular as taxing the rich, but it\u2019s by no means unpopular. It\u2019s not a question pollsters often ask about\u2014almost as if levels of military spending aren\u2019t seen as a fit subject for public debate\u2014but in 2013 Pew asked which was more important, \u201ctaking steps to reduce the budget deficit or keeping military spending at current levels.\u201d Fifty-one percent said reducing the deficit; only 40 percent chose maintaining the military budget.\u000aIn February 2014, the last time Gallup polled on whether spending \u201cfor national defense and military purposes\u201d was \u201ctoo little, about the right amount, or too much,\u201d a plurality of 37 percent picked \u201ctoo much.\u201d Only 28 percent said \u201ctoo little\u201d\u2013but again, you\u2019re never going to see the New York Times declare a candidate to be \u201cunelectable\u201d for proposing to raise the Pentagon\u2019s budget.\u000aMoyers & Co. ( 6/1/15 ) carried a well-documented post by Juan Cole that challenged corporate media headlines about Sanders\u2019 \u201codd views\u201d:\u000aBut Sanders\u2019 positions are quite mainstream from the point of view of the stances of the American public in general. Of course, the 1 percent, for whom and by whom most mainstream media report, are appalled and would like to depict him as an outlier.\u000aColumbia Journalism Review ( 5/21/15 ) also had a piece by Steve Hendricks that challenged the conventional wisdom that Sanders \u201ccan\u2019t win\u201d\u2014suggesting that establishment media like the New York Times were trying to make this a self-fulfilling prophecy:\u000aThe Times, for example, buried his announcement on page A21, even though every other candidate who had declared before then had been put on the front page above the fold. Sanders\u2019 straight-news story didn\u2019t even crack 700 words, compared to the 1,100 to 1,500 that Marco Rubio , Rand Paul , Ted Cruz  and Hillary Clinton got. As for the content, the Times\u2019 reporters declared high in Sanders\u2019 piece that he was a long shot for the Democratic nomination and that Clinton was all but a lock. None of the Republican entrants got the long-shot treatment, even though Paul, Rubio and Cruz were generally polling fifth, seventh and eighth among Republicans before they announced.\u000aNot convinced that the Times is trying to play down Sanders\u2019 candidacy? That report from Iowa included this as an explanation for why he was drawing crowds: \u201cSome Democrats also simply want to send a warning shot to Mrs. Clinton to get her to visit here more.\u201d\u000aLeave it to the New York Times to offer crowds at Bernie Sanders events as evidence of enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton.\u000aYou can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com , or to public editor Margaret Sullivan at public@nytimes.com . Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.\u000a \u000aFiled Under: Blog , zHome , zMail Tagged With: Elections 2016\u000aFacebook Likes\u000a
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Vthis story\u000aPhoto: AP\u000aOn the eve of the 1948 presidential election, Newsweek asked the 50 reporters on President Truman\u2019s campaign train to forecast the winner. To a man they went the way the Chicago Tribune infamously would on election night: \u201c Dewey defeats Truman .\u201d Lay historians will recall that not only did Truman defeat Dewey\u2014he clobbered him. Sorting out how the media got it so wrong, The New York Times\u2019 James Reston concluded that he and his brethren had been a lot like the aloof Governor Dewey himself, who was said to be the only man who could strut sitting down. Dewey played well with plutocrats and publishers. \u201c[J]ust as he was too isolated with other politicians,\u201d Reston wrote , \u201cso we were too isolated with other reporters; and we, too, were far too impressed by the tidy statistics of the polls.\u201d\u000aThis was true, but it fell to A. J. Liebling, the nonpareil of The New Yorker, to pick out the crucial vice that Reston and similarly minded colleagues overlooked. \u201cA great wave of contrition hit the Washington newspaper world in the days immediately following the joyous catastrophe,\u201d Liebling wrote , \u201cand men swore that they would go out and dig for the real truths of politics as they never had dug before. But few publishers encouraged them in their good resolutions, and most of them are back again running errands designed to bolster their bosses\u2019 new illusions.\u201d Bad as insiderism, arrogance, and poll-worship were, Liebling knew the real peril was that those sins usually furthered the bosses\u2019 agenda. It is one reason Liebling\u2019s most memorable bon mot is also his most eternal: \u201cFreedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.\u201d\u000aThose of a Lieblingian turn of mind could not have been surprised by the reception Bernie Sanders got last month when he entered the race for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. Sanders, of course, is Vermont\u2019s junior senator, barber\u2019s worst nightmare , and IKEA socialist (he favors the term \u201cdemocratic socialist,\u201d as in the Scandinavian variant), who quaintly maintains that people and the planet are more important than profit. Not long ago such beliefs fell well within the waters of the main stream where politicians swam, but the current has since been rerouted, and Sanders now paddles hard against the left bank. For not going with the flow, and for challenging Hillary Clinton, the big fish many elites have tagged as their own, Sanders\u2019s entry into the race was greeted with story after story whose message\u2014stated or understated, depending on the decorum of the messenger\u2014was \u201cThis crank can\u2019t win.\u201d\u000aThe trouble with this consensus is the paucity of evidence to support it. \u201cThis crank actually could win\u201d is nearer the mark. But having settled on a prophecy, the media went about covering Sanders so as to fulfill it. The Times, for example, buried his announcement on page A21, even though every other candidate who had declared before then had been put on the front page above the fold. Sanders\u2019s straight-news story didn\u2019t even crack 700 words, compared to the 1,100 to 1,500 that Marco Rubio , Rand Paul , Ted Cruz , and Hillary Clinton got. As for the content, the Times\u2019 reporters declared high in Sanders\u2019s piece that he was a long shot for the Democratic nomination and that Clinton was all but a lock. None of the Republican entrants got the long-shot treatment, even though Paul, Rubio, and Cruz were generally polling fifth, seventh, and eighth among Republicans before they announced.\u000aOther coverage of Sanders ran to caricature, as in Paul Kane and Philip Rucker\u2019s personality piece in the Washington Post, which opened, \u201cHe seems an unlikely presidential candidate\u2014an ex-hippie, septuagenarian socialist from the liberal reaches of Vermont who rails, in his thick Brooklyn accent, rumpled suit and frizzy pile of white hair, against the \u2018billionaire class\u2019 taking over the country.\u201d The Post\u2019s pieces didn\u2019t lead with Clinton\u2019s hippie past or her age (she will be a septuagenarian in 2017) and didn\u2019t say she rails when she discusses her more ardently held positions (she has a couple). Even the word \u201cliberal,\u201d which doesn\u2019t seem the worst quasi-pejorative to hang on a candidate who calls himself a socialist, sits poorly next to the flattering \u201cpopulist\u201d that the Post permitted Clinton, especially since she is a mere recent and rhetorical convert to the creed that Sanders has acted on for 40 years.\u000aOther major news organizations ignored Sanders as nearly as they could a sitting U.S. senator who entered the presidential race. ABC\u2019s World News Tonight gave his announcement all of 18 seconds , five of which were allotted to Clinton\u2019s tweet welcoming him to the race. CBS Evening News fitted the announcement into a single sentence at the end of a two-minute report about Clinton.\u000aIn past races, when editors have explained why they scorned the likes of Sanders, they have tended to recite an editorial recipe for political long shots that is much like the Hollywood recipe for starlets: don\u2019t cover them much, and don\u2019t take them seriously. The trouble with this commonplace is that editors actually love covering long shots\u2014certain long shots anyway. Ted Cruz, for example, received his serious, in-depth treatment in the Times\u2019 news columns even as its analysts were writing pieces like \u201c Why Ted Cruz Is Such A Long Shot .\u201d\u000aThe difference is that Cruz has not erected a platform whose planks present a boardwalk of horror to the corporate class atop the media. These same planks of Sanders\u2019s, not at all incidentally, are the very ones on which Clinton most wobbles as she stands before Democratic voters: raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, taxing carbon to fight climate change, killing the Keystone XL Pipeline and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, breaking up \u201ctoo big to fail\u201d banks, expanding Social Security by taxing the rich, and implementing a single-payer healthcare system. Clinton has thumbed her nose at each of these, whether by frank opposition ( supporting the TPP and big banks , opposing carbon taxes and single-payer ), refusing to state her position ( Keystone XL and Social Security expansion ), or backing vague alternatives (raising the minimum wage, but declining to say how much). Her corporatism, wed to her social liberalism and her imperial hawkishness, appeals to those in the moneyed Second and journalistic Fourth Estates who would embrace Republicanism but for its misogynistic, homophobic, racist, science-denying core.\u000aBut it\u2019s not only Sanders\u2019s opponents who slight him. Even his admirers spike their odes with dismissive vinegar, as in: \u201c Bernie Sanders Won\u2019t Win. But His Ideas Might \u201d and \u201c He Won\u2019t Win, So Why Is Bernie Sanders Running? \u201d and \u201c Bernie Sanders\u2019 \u2018socialism\u2019 may have mainstream appeal \u201d\u2014a headline whose promise is belied in the text with a terse \u201cSanders is never going to be president.\u201d Being ignored is the singular fear of pundit and reporter, so the progressively inclined pundit and the supposedly neutral reporter, knowing the establishment\u2019s disdain for Sanders and wanting to be \u201crelevant,\u201d armor their kind words for Sanders with \u201cHe can\u2019t win.\u201d This escutcheon against naivet\u0102\u0160 comes at the price of a critical faculty they were using only intermittently.\u000aThe foregoing would be woeful enough even were it true that Sanders has almost no chance of winning, but it\u2019s not true. I\u2019ll skip lightly over the conspicuous fact that any frontrunner can have a Chappaquiddick , a deceptively amplified \u201c scream ,\u201d or a plane crash . Instead, let me dwell on the simple fact that over the last 40 years, out of seven races in which the Democratic nomination was up for grabs\u2014races, that is, when a sitting Democrat president wasn\u2019t seeking reelection\u2014underdogs have won the nomination either three or four times (depending on your definition of an underdog) and have gone on to win the presidency more often than favored candidates.\u000aSome of these seekers were long shots indeed. Jimmy Carter was a lightly accomplished governor from a trifling state beyond whose borders he was little known and less regarded. A few weeks before he entered the presidential race, the Harris Poll asked voters their thoughts on 35 potential candidates. Carter was not on the list. After a year of campaigning, just a couple of months before the first primary, he routinely polled 1 percent among Democratic voters and finished eighth in the narrowed field of eight Democrats. But he won all the same because the other guys were Washington insiders, and after Watergate and Vietnam, Democratic voters (and eventually the wider electorate) didn\u2019t want another insider, no matter how often journalists told them they did. If you don\u2019t see a parallel to the present moment\u2014a discontented time of Occupy , Black Lives Matter , Moral Monday , Fight for $15 , the People\u2019s Climate March , Move to Amend , and other anti-establishmentarian agitation\u2014you\u2019re either asleep or a publisher.\u000aMichael Dukakis also polled as little as 1 percent just a few months before he announced (Sanders, by the way, was polling 5 to 8 percent at the equivalent stage), which paled beside the Hillary-esque 40 to 50 percent that Gary Hart was drawing. When Hart\u2019s campaign went down with a boatload of bimbo, Dukakis profited, although even then he was no favorite. Shortly before the first primary, he still polled no better than 10 percent, which was toe to toe with the forgettable Paul Simon and 15 points behind both Jesse Jackson and a resurrected Hart, who mounted a brief comeback because Dukakis and all the rest looked so impotent.\u000aSome observers wouldn\u2019t rate Bill Clinton an underdog, mostly because he wasn\u2019t one for long after he hopped into the race. But so slight was the shadow he cast nationally that nine months before the primaries, pollsters weren\u2019t listing him as a potential contender. Even he thought so little of his chances (Mario Cuomo was supposed to run, and to be invincible once he did) that he didn\u2019t announce until five months out. His odds improved from there.\u000aThe quixotic Barack Obama entered the race against a juggernaut whose endorsements were so thunderous and war chest so surpassing that many spectators thought the young senator was only trying to make himself known for a future contest. After campaigning all of 2007, he not only failed to advance on Clinton but found himself a little further back, dropping from 24 to 22 percent , while Clinton advanced from 39 to 45 percent . There were rumblings that he should bow out before the first vote so as not to weaken the ineluctable nominee.\u000aWhat you didn\u2019t hear much were reports like the following , from an atypically perceptive CNN in November 2007:\u000aThe polls tell us Sen. Hillary Clinton is the clear front-runner for the Democratic nomination\u2026So is it all over, before it even begins?\u000aBe careful with a poll, says New Hampshire Institute of Politics Director Paul Manuel. \u201cIt\u2019s not a predictor. It\u2019s a tool. It\u2019s a useful way to understand what\u2019s happening at that moment and nothing more.\u201d\u000aThe same copy could be run today, but if any large news outlet has, I\u2019ve missed it. We may be condemned, \u0102  la George Santayana, to repeat the past we\u2019ve forgotten, but it\u2019s less dispiriting to do so when that past lies further back than the lifespan of a well-kept guinea pig.\u000aSpurious though early polls may be as a predictor of who will win the nomination, every large news organization uses them to allot campaign coverage\u2014or to justify the coverage they\u2019ve already decided to give. The media\u2019s other big crutch for deciding coverage, campaign fundraising, is equally specious. While it is true that you cannot win a big campaign without money, it is also true that you needn\u2019t match the financial frontrunner dime for dime. You need only stay in the game. Just ask Hillary Clinton, who won her first Senate race over Rick Lazio even though he outraised her by a third : $39 million to $30 million. Or ask Howard Dean, whose $53 million didn\u2019t keep him from becoming the best-funded early departure in Democratic primary history. To the extent that editors and reporters remember these lessons, their coverage of Sanders\u2019s entry said they didn\u2019t think he could even get in the game with Clinton, whose super PAC had, after all, raised $15 million before she even announced.\u000aAs it turned out, though, Sanders had come to play. In the 24 hours after his announcement, he raised $1.5 million , a stout take. On their respective first days, Rand Paul raised $750,000, Ted Cruz $1 million, and Marco Rubio $1.25 million. Clinton refused to reveal her total, but since her campaign usually plays fundraising fortissimo, one imagines we would know the number if it reflected well on her. Sanders, it is true, did not start with a Clintonian $15 million, but his $5 million in the bank was a most respectable earnest. In short, Sanders was in the game. It remains to be seen whether simply being in the game will be enough in our new Wild West of campaign finance; there hasn\u2019t been a contested Democratic nomination since the Supreme Court\u2019s Citizens United decision in 2010. But the last contested nomination, in 2008, was itself a huge-money affair, and Obama won despite having started from a worse financial position than Sanders is in now (Clinton had $10 million at the start of 2007, Obama virtually nothing) and having been out-fundraised by Clinton throughout 2007.\u000aFor the moment, though, even Sanders\u2019s gainsayers cannot ignore his early totals, and a few of their subsequent dispatches have been colored with something like respect. The Post\u2019s Philip Rucker, for example, said on his blog that Sanders might, after all, be able to raise the $50 million he needs to run a \u201ccredible\u201d campaign. His first-day $1.5 million, Rucker wrote, was \u201ca surprisingly heavy haul for a candidate whom some in the Democratic chattering class have cast off as a gadfly and viewed as unable to wrest the nomination from the overwhelming favorite, Hillary Rodham Clinton.\u201d Rucker, himself a paragon of the reportorial chattering class, neglected to say that he had cast off the gadfly as a ranting hippie only the day before.\u000aOther chatterers, less charitable, have continued to say that money or no, Sanders is a non-starter because of his distance from the political center. They do not mention that distance from the center can be an asset in primaries (viz. Dukakis) or that political achievements believed to be impossible only yesterday\u2014a black man in the White House, a gay wedding in Utah\u2014can, under the right circumstances, become possible in a trice. Is the day of the IKEA socialist at hand? The chatterers don\u2019t know the answer. What they know is how to do their damnedest to ensure that day doesn\u2019t come too soon.\u000aSteve Hendricks is the author, most recently, of A Kidnapping in Milan: The CIA on Trial. His website is SteveHendricks.org .\u000aTrending stories\u000a
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VBy Ben Norton\u000aWhen a white male kills people in a mass shooting in the US, the corporate media follow an algorithm not unlike the Kübler-Ross model of the five stages of grief.\u000aFirst, media deny that the attack constitutes terrorism. In their view, acts of political violence carried out against civilians are indisputably terrorism when they are committed by a Muslim, but this is not necessarily the case when they are committed by a white person.\u000aThis is the stage in which most media coverage of shootings by white Americans remains stuck. When Elliot Rodger massacred six people and injured 14 more in May 2014, he was not classified as a terrorist\u2014even though he explicitly stated that his attack was motivated by an intense hatred of women, and that he sought to \u201cpunish\u201d women, collectively, for \u201crejecting\u201d him in the past.\u000aYet because of mounting pressure and criticism from independent media, activists and social media, in the wake of mass shooting after mass shooting carried out disproportionately by white men, corporate media are no longer able to remain in a state of such denial.\u000aThe T-Word\u000aThis is what separates the media response to the Charleston shooting. On June 17, 21-year-old white supremacist Dylann Storm Roof murdered nine people during Bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, South Carolina.\u000aRaw Story ( 6/18/15 ) revealed that Roof had shouted at his black victims,  \u201cYou rape our women and you\u2019re taking over our country \u2014 and you have to go.\u201d This was the first publication to openly refer to Roof as a terrorist.\u000aThe New York Times ( 6/18/15 ), although not outright referring to it as a terrorist attack, reported that many people were asking, \u201cWhy Not Call Church Shooting Terrorism?\u201d\u000aCNN ( 6/19/15 ) was the first large corporate media network to openly argue that we should \u201ccall it terrorism in Charleston.\u201d\u000aSeveral other publications additionally agreed to use the term. The Philadelphia Daily News wrote the word \u201cTerrorist!\u201d in large letters on the front page of its June 19 issue .\u000aNevertheless, not every publication adopted the T-word, and the coverage was still underwhelming.\u000aFAIR\u2019s Jim Naureckas (FAIR Blog, 6/19/15 ) counted the first-day US newspaper stories and found they were approximately one-fifth as likely to refer to terrorism in their reports on the Charleston massacre as they were in their first-day coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing\u2014in spite of the fact that the political motivation was initially much clearer in Charleston, and that more people were killed by Roof.\u000aWriting in The Intercept ( 6/19/15 ), journalist Glenn Greenwald argued that the refusal of some media and of the US government to call the Charleston massacre \u201cterrorism\u201d again shows it is \u201ca completely malleable, manipulated, vapid term of propaganda that has no consistent application whatsoever.\u201d\u000aReuters avoided the term for a different reason: As official policy , it does not label events or people terrorism or terrorists. The international news agency recognizes that \u201cterrorism\u201d is a political term, and simply chooses to avoid it. Writing in Reuters ( 6/23/15 ), Masha Gessen argues that, although the Charleston shooting is \u201calmost certainly\u201d a terrorist attack, it should not be referred to as such precisely because of the political exploitation of the term.\u000aHere, however, even the media that recognized the slaughter as a terrorist attack encountered the limitations of the second stage: an inability to grasp, and thus accurately report, the social forces that shape the worldview of a Dylann Roof. Although corporate media have taken steps in a positive direction, their overall coverage leaves much to be desired.\u000aThe \u2018Post-Racial\u2019 Myth\u000aDylann Storm Roof in his Facebook profile pictures, wearing apartheid flag patches\u000aThe first indication that Roof was a white supremacist was the profile picture on his Facebook page. The photo depicted the young man wearing a jacket decorated with patches of the flags of apartheid-era South Africa and Rhodesia, the name Zimbabwe was called under colonial white-minority rule. In conjunction with the fact that a survivor recalled him accusing black people collectively of raping white women and taking over the country, this made it clear that Roof\u2019s motivations were racist in nature.\u000aThe corporate media, nonetheless\u2014and the right-wing media in particular\u2014largely remained in denial. In fact, some publications propagated an antithetical narrative: the \u201cpost-racial\u201d myth.\u000aThe editorial board of the Wall Street Journal ( 6/18/15 ) went out of its way to claim that racism is dead and that Roof\u2019s motivation \u201cis a problem that defies explanation beyond the reality that evil still stalks humanity.\u201d\u000aThe \u201csystem and philosophy of institutionalized racism identified by Dr. King no longer exists,\u201d the renowned publication claimed. Instead of recognizing the racism that motivated the killer, the Wall Street Journal appeals to an \u201cevil\u201d that is presumably inevitable\u2014and yet apparently does not manifest itself with the nearly the same frequency in other \u201cadvanced nations.\u201d\u000aOn Steve Malzberg\u2019s conservative Newsmax television program ( 6/19/15 ), Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry claimed that the shooting was an \u201caccident\u201d caused by drugs.\u000aWithout evidence, on the morning after the shooting, Fox News ( 6/18/15 ) claimed the attack was religiously, not racially, motivated\u2014although nothing is known about Roof\u2019s religion or thoughts on the subject. In their coverage, the Fox & Friends hosts do not even mention that the people killed were all black. They refer to the church as \u201ca historic church,\u201d not \u201ca historic black church,\u201d and the killing as a \u201chorrifying attack on faith.\u201d \u201cIf we\u2019re not safe in our own churches, then where are we safe?\u201d the Fox News hosts ask.\u000aThe New York Times removed \u201cwhite\u201d from the headline and \u201chate crime\u201d from the lead in its June 18 article about the shooting, downplaying the racism involved in the attack.\u000aPathologizing\u000aWhite supremacist Dylann Roof, in a photo he uploaded to his website\u000aWhen Roof\u2019s white supremacist manifesto was discovered on his personal website, along with 60 photos of him posing with neo-Nazi and white supremacist symbols,  no doubt remained that his goals were fundamentally racist. In the typo-ridden document, Roof details his white supremacist ideology and blatantly declares that, by attacking black civilians, he hoped to instigate a race war.\u000a\u201cI have no choice. I am not in the position to, alone, go into the ghetto and fight,\u201d Roof wrote. \u201cI chose Charleston because it is most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites [sic] in the country.\u201d\u000aIn the manifesto , Roof also reveals that he was radicalized by searching the internet for reports on \u201cblack-on-white violence.\u201d He says he googled the phrase and came across the Council of Conservative Citizens, a racist organization with ties to the Republican party . This organization, a recognized hate group , radicalized him.\u000aA double standard here is obvious. If a Muslim extremist said he were radicalized by an organization, the media would instantly dub the group an incubator of terrorism. There would be talk in government of terrorism indictments, and, if the group was based overseas, potentially even drone strikes.\u000aYet, in lieu of pointing out the role of the US right wing and the conservative media in radicalizing Roof, corporate media preferred to pathologize him as a distraught young man, a mere product of a troubled childhood.\u000aThe Daily Mail emphasized that Roof\u2019s father is \u201ctattooed with nipple rings\u201d\u000aThe UK\u2019s right-wing tabloid the Daily Mail\u2014which has a long history of incredibly problematic behavior, most notably its support of the Nazis and Fascists in WWII , and which still today runs overtly racist anti-refugees pieces and whitewashes Blackwater mercenaries who massacred Iraqi civilians\u2014went out of its way to humanize the killer.\u000aIt titled a piece ( 6/19/15 ), in one of its trademark long headlines:\u000aCharleston killer Dylann Roof grew up in a fractured home where his \u2018violent\u2019 father beat his stepmother and hired a private detective to follow her when they split, she claims in court papers.\u000aIn the first line, the tabloid refers to Roof as \u201cthe white loner.\u201d The Daily Mail, in detailing the ways Roof\u2019s father abused his partner, drew undue attention to his tattoos and nipple rings, appearing to suggest that this is a factor in turning the son into a white supremacist murderer. It mentioned that Roof \u201cspent his days taking drugs and playing video games,\u201d but scarcely acknowledged his involvement in racist movements.\u000aThe New York Daily News ( 6/19/15 ) also reported that Roof \u201cwas raised in a home destroyed by domestic violence\u201d: \u201cRoof had one chance at a stable family life \u2014 and his abusive dad ruined it for him,\u201d the publication writes. The Daily News also went out of its way to mention that the shooter\u2019s father is \u201ctattoo-covered.\u201d\u000aMedia went so far as to blame the internet for the violence Roof carried out. NBC ( 6/20/15 ), quoting Roof\u2019s family, reduced the attack to \u201cinternet evil.\u201d\u000aAnd, of course, the infamous mental illness trope lay in the background of much of the discussion.\u000aConservative publication Newsmax ( 6/19/15 ) wrote that \u201cmedia reports are already debating whether the 21-year-old man is deranged or merely a bigot with a gun.\u201d\u000aNewsweek ( 6/19/15 ) also attributed the violence to mental illness, writing \u201cif history is any indication, the shooter most likely has a history of severe mental health issues that have either gone untreated or undiagnosed.\u201d\u000aIn spite of this common excuse vis-à-vis mass shootings by white males, research has found that people who are mentally ill are more likely to be victims, not perpetrators , of violence.\u000aHumanizing\u000aIn addition to riffing on pop psychology and treating the killer as if he were a mere victim of unfortunate circumstances, not as the proponent of a violent white supremacist ideology that he is, media fumbled over themselves in their desperate attempt to humanize Roof.\u000aAP ( 6/19/15 ) verged on the farcical by quoting an acquaintance of Roof who said he didn\u2019t know Roof was a racist\u2014in spite of his apartheid flag patches and Confederate license plate\u2014as \u201che had black friends.\u201d (The Daily Beast\u2014 6/18/15\u2014 also emphasized this infamous \u201c black friends \u201d trope.)\u000aAnother acquaintance is quoted by AP ( 6/19/15 ) saying the killer \u201cwas a really sweet kid. He was quiet. He only had a few friends.\u201d AP only mentions in the third-last paragraph that Roof is a \u201cdisaffected white supremacist.\u201d\u000aReuters ( 6/18/15 ) quoted Roof\u2019s uncle, describing the shooter as \u201cquiet and soft-spoken.\u201d Mother Jones ( 6/18/15 ) quoted the shooter\u2019s former lawyer, who said he had seemed like \u201cjust a normal kid.\u201d\u000aPeople ( 6/19/15 ) even dragged in Roof\u2019s sister, reporting that she cancelled her wedding in the wake of the massacre.\u000aRecognizing the Radicalizers\u000aAbsent from this discussion were the forces that turned Dylann Roof into a white-supremacist, far-right radical who posed with \u201cheil Hitler\u201d symbols. There are obvious actors who regularly espouse the \u201cblack-on-white violence\u201d narrative that, Roof said, ultimately inspired his attack.\u000aThe right-wing National Review ( 5/12/12 ) argues that there is a left-wing conspiracy to cover up black-on-white crime. \u201cA censored race war\u201d is already ongoing, the publication avers, and \u201cthe media ignore racially motivated black-on-white crime.\u201d Examiner.com\u2018s Anthony Martin ( 5/15/12 ) makes the same argument.\u000aBreitbart regularly warns of \u201cblack-on-white\u201d violence and has constantly depicted  the Black Lives Matter civil rights movement as an anti-white hate movement (e.g.,  4/25/15 ).\u000aWhen one googles \u201cblack on white violence,\u201d among the first results that come up are David Horowitz\u2019 far-right FrontPage Mag ( 9/13/13 ) (the motto of which is \u201cInside every liberal is a totalitarian screaming to get out\u201d), the right-wing American Thinker ( 4/8/15 ). Both of these publications have large readerships among the American right wing.\u000aRoof says in his manifesto that it was paranoid media coverage such as this that made him believe that white Americans are under attack. He claimed the news was \u201cblowing up the Trayvon Martin case while hundreds of these black on White [sic] murders got ignored.\u201d Roof\u2019s media paranoia was compounded by right-wing demagogues\u2019 fearmongering about a supposedly impending \u201crace war.\u201d\u000aAlex Jones\u2019 conspiratorial website InfoWars ( 5/7/15 ) warned that Obama is going to \u201cdeputize and arm gang members such as the \u2018Crips and the Bloods'\u201d in order to fight a race war. \u201cThe guillotines are ready and they are greasing the blades,\u201d InfoWars asserted, citing right-wing talkshow host Michael Savage.\u000aRight-wing pundit Michelle Malkin likewise warns that black Americans are calling for a race war. Libertarian idol Ron Paul has in the past also forecast a violent race war.\u000aRoof pointed to the shooting of unarmed black teen Trayvon Martin as a concrete example of an instigating factor. Conservative publications such as the Daily Caller ( 3/26/12 ) constantly claimed that the cards were stacked against George Zimmerman, the man who killed Martin, and that black people were exploiting the shooting in order to threaten whites.\u000aIn his Fox program the O\u2019Reilly Factor ( 6/19/15 ), right-wing pundit Bill O\u2019Reilly insisted that \u201cfar-left rhetoric is far more hateful these days than what the hard right puts out,\u201d implying that leftist speech is worse than right-wing terror attacks. AlterNet writer Zaid Jilani remarked in response , \u201cThe far-right blows up government buildings, what does the far-left do, vicious drum circles?\u201d\u000aLike Roof, O\u2019Reilly insists that \u201cwhite suppression\u201d and oppression of black people is the \u201cfar left\u2019s newest propaganda\u201d and \u201ca big lie.\u201d \u201cBasically, the anti-American zealots are trying to convince people that we have an unjust society,\u201d O\u2019Reilly claimed on the O\u2019Reilly Factor ( 4/18/15 ). O\u2019Reilly, like much of the conservative press, pointed to the April Baltimore Uprising as an example of black people\u2019s supposed assault on white America.\u000aThese are the media outlets and demagogues that spread the myths that ultimately lead white supremacists like Dylann Roof to carry out horrific acts of violence. Right-wing publications routinely warn of an impending \u201crace war,\u201d ostensibly instigated by black \u201caggressors,\u201d yet the media has failed to openly connect the dots.\u000aSteps Forward\u000aThe ultimate irony is that, the day before the Charleston massacre, a New York Times op-ed ( 6/16/15 ) warned of \u201cThe Growing Right-Wing Terror Threat.\u201d In spite of the constant warning about Muslim extremists, researchers Charles Kurzman and David Schanzer noted, \u201cheadlines can mislead. The main terrorist threat in the United States is not from violent Muslim extremists, but from right-wing extremists. Just ask the police.\u201d\u000aDylann Roof poses on a beach with \u201c1488,\u201d a neo-Nazi symbol\u000aRoof, not just a white supremacist but a far-right extremist who posted photos to his website of himself posing with neo-Nazi symbols, is emblematic of this very real and  dangerous threat. Yet even when the right-wing threat manifests itself before the corporate media\u2019s own eyes, they are seldom able to recognize it. Journalists need to spend less time investigating white shooters\u2019 allegedly lonely lives and drug habits and more time detailing what exactly turned them into extremists.\u000aThanks to pressure from independent media and activists, the press may slowly be acknowledging that white Americans can indeed be terrorists, but they continue to refuse to scrutinize what exactly made them that way. When a Muslim extremist kills civilians, the media virtually instantly look for, or assume, a connection to organized radical Islamist groups.\u000aIn contrast, Roof, and fellow white male shooters, are typically seen as \u201clone wolves.\u201d The fact that Roof is part of a larger white supremacist movement, the fact that he was radicalized by an organization that has ties to the mainstream right-wing party and by myths that are propagated by popular conservative media, are largely ignored. Media may now recognize the crime, yet they continue to downplay its causes.\u000aBen Norton is a freelance journalist and writer. His website can be found at BenNorton.com and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton .\u000aRelated\u000a
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VBy Jim Naureckas\u000aThe Boston Marathon bombing was widely called \u201cterrorism\u201d when people had no idea who committed it or what motivated them. (cc photo: Aaron Tang)\u000aIn the wake of mass violence, a nation struggling to understand turns to its news outlets to see how they frame events. The language journalists use in the immediate aftermath of a bloodbath helps form public attitudes and has a major impact on official reactions.\u000aWhen two bombs went off at the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013, killing three and injuring hundreds, it was inevitably a huge story: A search of the Nexis news database for US newspapers on the next day turns up 2,593 stories mentioning the marathon, virtually all of them about the bombing. Of these, 887, or 34 percent, used the word \u201cterrorism\u201d or a variant (\u201cterrorist,\u201d \u201cterroristic\u201d etc.)\u2013even though the bombers, let alone the bombers\u2019 motivations, would not be known until days later.\u000aDylann Roof, suspect in the Charleston church massacre, wears white supremacist emblems and allegedly told friends he was hoping \u201cto start a civil war\u201d\u2013yet he was rarely called a \u201cterrorist\u201d in media coverage.\u000aWhen nine people were killed at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on April 17, 2015, there were 367 stories in the next day\u2019s papers that mentioned \u201cCharleston\u201d and \u201cchurch,\u201d according to Nexis\u2013a big story, though not given the blockbuster treatment of the Boston Marathon bombing. Of these 367 stories, 24 mentioned \u201cterrorism\u201d or \u201cterrorist\u201d\u2013just 7 percent, even though a suspect, Dylann Roof, was named on the first day, with evidence presented that he was motivated by a white supremacist ideology and a desire \u201cto start a civil war\u201d (Columbia, S.C. State, 6/18/15 ).\u000aSome suggest that the word \u201cterrorism\u201d has been so politically manipulated and selectively applied that we would do well to drop the whole concept. But politically motivated violence that targets civilians\u2013which is the core of the various definitions of \u201cterrorism\u201d\u2013is an actual phenomenon that is hard to talk about without a label.\u000aIf media are going to use the word, though, they need to have a single standard for its application. By applying the word to a bombing with initially unknown perpetrators, and largely declining to use it in connection with a massacre allegedly perpetrated by a white supremacist hoping to spark a race war, media failed that test.\u000aJim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org .\u000aResearch assistance: Michael Tkaczevski.\u000a
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VBy Cheryl Cooky\u000aPercentage of sports coverage that\u2019s about women\u2019s sports, 1989\u20132014 (Communication & Sports)\u000aIf someone told you that there is less coverage of women\u2019s sports on televised news programs today than there was in 1989, would you believe them? It would be reasonable if your response was \u201cno.\u201d\u000aCertainly, girls and women\u2019s participation in sport has dramatically increased over the past 25+ years, and there are a number of professional women\u2019s leagues today that did not exist in 1989. There\u2019s also been a tremendous growing interest in and fan base for women\u2019s sports over the last quarter century.\u000aSadly, according to recently published research in Communication & Sport ( 6/5/15 ) conducted by myself and colleagues Mike Messner and Michela Musto at the University of Southern California, in 2014 televised news media devoted a paltry 2-3 percent of its broadcast time to covering women\u2019s sports. And, in fact, this was lower than the 5 percent of coverage women\u2019s sports received in 1989. According to our 2014 data, of the 934 Los Angeles local network affiliate news segments in our sample (over 12 hours of broadcasts), 880 were on men\u2019s sports (approximately 11-and-a-half hours) while only 32 segments, or about 23 minutes, featured women\u2019s sports. (The remaining time was spent on \u201cgender-neutral\u201d sports such as marathon or recreational sports.) ESPN\u2019s SportsCenter\u2019s numbers were similar. Of the 405 total SportsCenter segments in our sample (nearly 14 hours), 376 covered men\u2019s sports (just over 13 hours) while only 13 segments, approximately 17 minutes, featured women\u2019s sports.\u000aAccording to a statement made by ESPN, their broadcast event coverage of women\u2019s sports increased from 1,500 hours to 7,500 hours over the past five years. Yet, according to our research, SportsCenter\u2019s coverage of women\u2019s sport has held steady at 2 percent since we added the program to the study in 1999. Indeed, given the tremendous growth in women\u2019s sports, and in broadcast event coverage as ESPN\u2019s numbers would suggest, one would expect to see an increase in news media coverage. And while many might conclude that the news media are simply giving viewers \u201cwhat they want,\u201d our data suggest that the news media, through their commentary and coverage, help to build and sustain audiences and fans of men\u2019s sports while containing any interest in women\u2019s sports.\u000aHow sports coverage is divided (on local network affiliates and Sports Center) (Communications & Sports)\u000aMen\u2019s sports, and specifically the \u201cBig Three\u201d (men\u2019s professional and collegiate football, basketball and baseball) continued to monopolize the news broadcast time, representing 75 percent of our total 2014 sample, and are featured even when out of season. For example, the Los Angeles local affiliates, which operate under significant time constraints (most network news sportscasts are only several minutes in length), often included lengthy \u201chuman interest\u201d stories about men\u2019s sports, such as a 55-second segment about a stray dog that wandered into the Milwaukee Brewers\u2019 stadium and a 40-second segment about whether a NBA player who recently had been traded would be able to find a good burrito in his new team\u2019s city. Note that these stories appeared on days where no women\u2019s sports were covered during the broadcast.\u000aWhile the amount of coverage remained low across the 25-year span of the study, one positive shift we observed, a trend that emerged in our 2009 sample and continues today, is the absence of the sexualization of female athletes. Unfortunately, this \u201cpositive\u201d trend in the quality of coverage has been accompanied by the decline in the amount of coverage of women\u2019s sports. It would seem that the news media have become sensitized regarding the use of overt sexism in commentary, we hope in part because of our research.\u000aYet, on the rare moments when the sports news media do cover women\u2019s sports, these stories were delivered in a bland, unenthusiastic, \u201cjust-the-facts\u201d manner. In a typical segment, KABC (7/26/14) concluded its 11 p.m. newscast with a segment on the world series of pro beach volleyball:\u000aYour weekend wouldn\u2019t be complete without a little volleyball. Kerri Walsh Jennings and April Ross taking on team Slovakia in the semi-finals, looking for their fourth win of the tour. Easily dispatching the Slovakians in the first set, they lost the 2nd set, so it was decided in three. And team USA advances to that gold medal game, so if you\u2019ve got nothing else to do, cool off tomorrow down at the beach in Long Beach.\u000aThis \u201cif you\u2019ve got nothing else to do\u201d approach stood in stark contrast to the enthusiastic, excited delivery by which men\u2019s sports are discussed. Men\u2019s sports segments were characterized by high production values (interviews, music, graphics, etc.), accompanied by high-quality commentary, vocal inflection and exciting action descriptors.\u000aFor example, during SportsCenter\u2018s coverage of highlights from the MLB All Star Home Run Derby (7/14/14), a sports anchor discussed a Giancarlo Stanton hit: \u2018\u2018Wow! Take another look at this one. He just absolutely destroys them! You can see the speed on that swing in real time. And you just stand and admire a shot like that.\u2019\u2019 Later, a sports analyst gushed over  Yoenis Céspedes:\u2018\u2018Céspedes kept getting better and better, and the home runs kept getting longer and longer and the numbers got bigger and bigger.\u201d\u000aCandace Parker as a Tennessee forward shooting over players from LSU in the 2008 national semifinals. (cc photo: majorvols)\u000aOn the rare occasion the news media applied the same high production values and quality of commentary to women\u2019s sports, in most instances these segments highlighted a female athlete\u2019s dual role as athlete and mother. Segments featuring basketball star Lisa Leslie\u2019s induction into the Hall of Fame and Candace Parker\u2019s stellar WNBA career incorporated interview questions regarding how the athletes balance being an elite athlete with being a mother. (\u201cHow do you balance being the centerpiece of a franchise with being a centerpiece of a little girl\u2019s life as well?\u2019\u2019 SportsCenter asked Parker.)\u000aWhile some may argue this is an improvement over the sexualized stories of female athletes we found in previous iterations of our study (see our article in the Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 2/03 ), featuring female athletes as mothers continues to situate them within conventional gender roles. It would seem that the options for representations of female athletes are limited by the sports news media to sexual object, mother or no representation at all.\u000aI was recently asked for my response to the results of the study, to which I replied, \u201cI\u2019m surprised that I\u2019m surprised.\u201d Indeed, previous iterations of this study speak to the persisting inequality in the televised news media coverage of women\u2019s sports so in some ways I expected that we would find a continued lack of coverage. Yet it would seem that over 40 years after the passage of Title IX, after the emergence of a number of professional women\u2019s leagues and the tremendous growth in women\u2019s collegiate basketball, we would have found similar gains and improvements in news media coverage. In our research, we explain this in terms of the \u201cunevenness of social change,\u201d which is easy to identify and describe, but much more challenging to explain and address. Why are we able to move forward in some realms while being stuck in outdated modes and ways of being in others?\u000aWhat I can say is this: Media coverage of sports matters. The sports news media not only inform us of the major events in the world of sports, they are a powerful institution that actively builds and sustains interest and audiences for men\u2019s sports. The media silence around women\u2019s sports stunts the building of audiences and fan base for women\u2019s sports. This has implications for gender relations in our society. As we explain:\u000aThe daily news and highlights shows\u2019 failure to equitably cover women\u2019s sports shrouds in silence women\u2019s historic movement into sport and the impressive accomplishments of women athletes, thus retaining sport as a potent site for the reproduction of ideologies of male superiority.\u000aImproving the media coverage of women\u2019s sports would go a long way in positively changing gender relations in our society.\u000aCheryl Cooky, Ph.D., is associate professor of women\u2019s, gender and sexuality studies at Purdue University.\u000aRelated\u000aFiled Under: Article , zHome , zMail Tagged With: Sexism , Sports\u000aFacebook Likes\u000a
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VBlog\u000aJun 25 2015\u000aThat Most Terrorists Aren\u2019t Muslim May \u2018Come as a Surprise\u2019\u2013if You Get Your News From Corporate Media\u000aThe New York Times depicts police at the scene of a terror incident at a Las Vegas Walmart\u2013the kind of political violence the paper thinks will surprise its readers. (photo: Steve Marcus/Reuters)\u000aSince the Al Qaeda attacks on September 11, 2001, the New York Times ( 6/23/15 ) reports,\u000aextremists have regularly executed smaller lethal assaults in the United States\u2026. But the breakdown of extremist ideologies behind those attacks may come as a surprise.\u000aThe \u201csurprise\u201d is that more people are killed by \u201cwhite supremacists, antigovernment fanatics and other non-Muslim extremists than by radical Muslims\u201d: 48 vs. 26 since 9/11, according to a study by the New America Foundation. (More comprehensive studies cited in a recent New York Times op-ed\u2013 6/16/15 \u2013show an even greater gap, with 254 killed in far-right violence since 9/11, according to West Point\u2019s Combating Terrorism Center, compared to 50 killed in jihadist-related terrorism.)\u000aThe Times suggests that \u201csuch numbers are new to the public\u201d\u2013but they won\u2019t come as much of a surprise to those familiar with FAIR\u2019s work. In articles like \u201cMore Terror, Less Coverage\u201d (Extra!, 5/11 ) and \u201cA Media Microscope on Islam-Linked Violence\u201d (Extra!, 8/13 ), FAIR\u2019s Steve Rendall has debunked the claim that terrorism is mostly or exclusively a Muslim phenomenon, pointing out that white, right-wing Christians are responsible for the bulk of political violence in the United States.\u000aBut in a piece all about the \u201cmismatch between public perceptions and actual cases,\u201d the entity most charged with making sure these match\u2013the news media\u2013doesn\u2019t get much scrutiny, except from \u201csome Muslim advocates\u201d who \u201ccomplain\u201d of media double standards. There is research on this question\u2013such as a study from University of Illinois communications professor Travis Dixon, summarized in the Champaign/Urbana News Gazette ( 6/23/15 ):\u000aBetween 2008 and 2012, about 6 percent of domestic terrorism suspects were Muslim, or about 1 in 17, according to FBI reports.\u000aBut in that same period, about 81 percent of the domestic terrorists described on national cable and network television news programs were Muslim.\u000aStatistics like these would go a long way toward explaining why there might be readers for whom reports of non-Muslim terrorism \u201ccome as a surprise.\u201d\u000aReporter  Scott Shane  does note that instances of white supremacist terror have \u201cdrawn only fleeting news media coverage\u201d\u2013citing lethal incidents that FAIR has sought to call attention to, like the massacre at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin (CounterSpin, 8/9/13 ) and a shooting spree by a far-right couple in Las Vegas (FAIR Blog, 6/13/14 ). \u201cTo revisit some of the episodes is to wonder why\u201d they didn\u2019t get more press attention, Shane says\u2013but why wonder why, when you can just, say, ask an editor?\u000aThe answers\u2013of sorts\u2013that the piece closes with come not from the media decision-makers who actually choose which violent incidents get spotlighted, but from academic terrorism experts. William Braniff, head of a terrorism think tank at the University of Maryland, asserts:\u000aWe understand white supremacists\u2026.  We don\u2019t really feel like we understand Al Qaeda, which seems too complex and foreign to grasp.\u000aAnd John Horgan, who studies terrorism at the University of Massachusetts/Lowell, gets the last word, saying of extremist violence: \u201cVery often, it comes from someplace you\u2019re least suspecting.\u201d\u000aThe pronouns do a lot of work in these sentences. Who are \u201cwe,\u201d exactly, that understand white supremacists so well that we don\u2019t have to pay any attention to them; are \u201cwe\u201d different from the \u201cyou\u201d that doesn\u2019t suspect that these well-understood white supremacists might be dangerously violent?\u000a \u000a
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VShare on WhatsApp\u000aThe Senate commendably passed an amendment \u201coutlawing\u201d torture by a wide margin on Monday, but given that torture is already against the law - both through existing US statute and by international treaty - what does that really mean?\u000aThe bill, a response by lawmakers to last year\u2019s devastating CIA torture report that exposed the agency\u2019s rampant illegal conduct and subsequent cover-up in the years after 9/11, would force all US agencies - including the CIA, finally - to comply with the Pentagon\u2019s rulebook on interrogations. It would also forbid any of the Pentagon\u2019s interrogation rules from being secret and give the Red Cross access to all detainees held by the US, no matter where.\u000aOne would\u2019ve thought pre-9/11 that it would be hard to write the current law prohibiting torture any more clearly . Nothing should have allowed the Bush administration to get away with secretly interpreting laws out of existence or given the CIA authority to act with impunity. The only reason a host of current and former CIA officials aren\u2019t already in jail is because of cowardice on the Obama administration, which refused to prosecute Bush administration officials who authorized the torture program, those who destroyed evidence of it after the fact or even those who went beyond the brutal torture techniques that the administration shamefully did authorize.\u000aSince the Senate\u2019 report reinvigorated the torture debate six months ago, Obama officials have continued to try their hardest to make the controversy go away by stifling Freedom of Information Act requests for the full report and, in many cases, refusing to even read it . And Bush-era law-breakers were even given the courtesy of having their names redacted from the report, sparing them of public shaming or criticism, despite clear public interest to the contrary.\u000aInstead of treating torture as the criminal matter that it is, the Obama administration effectively turned it into a policy debate, a fight over whether torture \u201cworked\u201d. It didn\u2019t of course, as mountains of evidence has proved , but it\u2019s mind-boggling we\u2019re even having that debate considering that torture is a clear-cut war crime. It\u2019s like debating the legality of child slavery while opening your argument with: \u201cwell, it is good for the economy.\u201d\u000aBut that\u2019s now where we stand. While torture victims are without recourse \u2013 for over a decade, Guantanamo prisoners have been barred from testifying about what the CIA did to them \u2013 torture architects are television pundits , appearing on the big networks\u2019 Sunday shows to defend one national security excess or another. They\u2019re given enormous book contracts and 60 Minutes puff pieces , while almost universally avoiding tough questions, let alone an indictment. Those still inside government have not only avoided reprimand, but have gotten promotions .\u000aAnd look where that attitude has left us: John Oliver, who did an excellent segment on the torture debate on Sunday , asked 14 presidential candidates if they supported the new ban, and only four responded with an affirmative. I guess it\u2019s not exactly a surprise that this year\u2019s lot of Republicans is more than willing to appeal to Jack Bauer fans over proven facts, given Mitt Romney openly advocated for rolling back Obama\u2019s executive order \u201cbanning\u201d torture in 2012. But given the outright disgust the torture report elicited, it\u2019s embarrassing hardly any Republicans seemed to have reconsidered their positions.\u000aMost notably, CIA director John Brennan has escaped completely unscathed - despite both advocating for torture during the Bush administration and authorizing the hacking of computers used by Senate staffers while they conducted their torture investigation during the Obama administration. But David Buckley, CIA inspector general who investigated the agency for its potentially illegal and unconstitutional hacking episode? He resigned shortly after the CIA refused to act on his findings, and his position will likely remain empty for the foreseeable future .\u000aI certainly hope the House follows the Senate\u2019s lead and passes the torture amendment into law. It is a powerful statement, if only to dilute some of the secrecy surrounding prisoner interrogation that has infected the last two administrations . Though if torture was already illegal, who knows how this law will stop the next president any more than the existing laws stopped the last.\u000a
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VMP3 Link\u000aThis week on CounterSpin: Proponents say the USA Freedom Act, while not perfect, at least means the end of NSA collection of US citizens\u2019 phone records. Is that really true? Could the law\u2019s shortcomings outweigh its merits? We\u2019ll hear from Sue Udry, executive director of the Defending Dissent Foundation and acting director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee.\u000aAlso on the show: Murder charges will be brought against the Bangladeshi factory owners and government officials responsible for the 2013 collapse at Rana Plaza, the garment industry disaster that killed more than 1,100 people. Barbara Briggs is associate director of the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights. We\u2019ll talk with her about what\u2019s being done to prevent such nightmares going forward.\u000aLINKS:\u000a
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VMP3 Link\u000aThis week on CounterSpin: Solitary confinement is discussed so matter-of-factly in US media that you wouldn\u2019t guess that many people in the world consider it to be torture\u2014and call not for its restriction, but its abolition. Some of the information driving that belief can be found in a new report from the Vera Institute for Justice. We\u2019ll hear about the report from co-author Jessa Wilcox, senior program associate at Vera\u2019s Center on Sentencing and Corrections.\u000aAlso on the show: If I say soccer\u2019s in the headlines, you likely think of the FIFA corruption scandal rather than the Women\u2019s World Cup, although that\u2019s also happening. It\u2019s not your fault: Despite ever-growing popularity, women\u2019s sports just don\u2019t seem to garner big-time media interest. What needs to change? Our guest researches that very subject. Cheryl Cooky is associate professor of women\u2019s, gender and sexuality studies at Purdue University, and lead author of the new report on TV sports coverage whose name says it all: \u201cIt\u2019s Dude Time!\u201d\u000aAnd, as usual, we take a look back at recent press, including police violence, TPP and CNN\u2018s \u201cnews-like content\u201d unit.\u000aLINKS:\u000a\u201cSolitary Confinement: Common Misconceptions and Emerging Safe Alternatives,\u201d by Alison Shames, Jessa Wilcox and Ram Subramanian (Vera Institute, 5/12/15 )\u000a\u201c\u2018It\u2019s Dude Time!': A Quarter Century of Excluding Women\u2019s Sports in Televised News and Highlight Shows,\u000aCheryl Cooky, Michael A. Messner and Michaela Musto (Communication & Sport, 6/5/15 )\u000aRelated\u000a
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VBy Adam Johnson\u000aVice illustrated its story exposing fake protest threats with a photo of real protesters.  (photo: John Taggart/EPA)\u000aSelf-described \u201cFOIA terrorist\u201d Jason Leopold  of Vice ( 6/24/15 ) has released devastating documents about the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI\u2019s analysis of a \u201cthreat\u201d released by Baltimore police to media on April 27. The police had claimed that local \u201cgangs\u201d had gotten together and conspired to \u201ctake out cops\u201d; this \u201ccredible threat,\u201d used to justify an aggressive crackdown on protests against police violence, was reported on at the time from everyone from local news to national outlets like CBS News ( 4/27/15 ):\u000aAs the funeral for Freddie Gray, the man who suffered a fatal spinal injury in police custody, was held Monday, the Baltimore Police Department announced they had received information about a \u201ccredible threat\u201d against the lives of its officers.\u000aIn a press release, the department states that \u201cmembers of various gangs including the Black Guerilla Family, Bloods, and Crips have entered into a partnership to \u2018take out\u2019 law enforcement officers.\u201d The statement advises local agencies to \u201ctake appropriate precautions to ensure the safety of their officers.\u201d\u000aIt turns out, however, that an FBI review in the following days would determine this threat was entirely without merit. As Vice  reported :\u000aBut an email sent that day by a DHS employee who works at the Maryland Fusion Center to DHS intelligence officer Earl Rose IV called into question the integrity of the Baltimore Police Department\u2019s [BPD] threat information. The fusion center employee said it was \u201ccurious that the alert came out from BPD media relations section instead of BPD Intelligence Unit, which is where we typically receive this kind of info\u2026. The tensions have heightened here in Baltimore over the last 72 hours so this alert cannot be considered without that context.\u201d\u000aHours later, in the same email chain, another DHS employee said, \u201cFBI Baltimore has interviewed the source of this information and has determined this threat to be non-credible,\u201d apparently marking this the first time that it was debunked since the threat first surfaced.\u000aNote that the threat was disseminated by the Baltimore Police Department\u2019s media relations section, not its intelligence unit, where such alerts generally originate. At the time, FAIR noted how uncritically the media were reporting these Baltimore Police Department claims\u2014even though the police had a direct conflict of interest and never provided any proof.\u000aIt\u2019s a time-tested tactic, FAIR observed :\u000aThe police call up the press, tell them how worried they are about all the threats they\u2019ve received, and are never asked to show a shred of evidence said threats actually exist. The press repeats these claims, and the fundamental propaganda meme\u2014that protestors are threatening the police\u2014is disseminated unquestioned.\u000aThe \u201cgang conspiracy\u201d threat was not without consequence. This threat\u2014in concert with a dual hyping of a \u201cpurge\u201d (also a story full of baseless police claims) on April 27 was critical for expediting the arrival of the Maryland National Guard, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. In effect, the fever pitch of panic resulting from the anonymous \u201cgang\u201d threat and \u201cthe purge\u201d narrative is what ultimately led to curfews and a severe dampening of the largely lawful and peaceful protests in the wake of Freddie Gray\u2019s funeral. The media uncritically repeated these stories\u2014with their varying degrees of truth\u2014and gave the Baltimore Police the benefit of the doubt throughout the Baltimore Uprising, even though much of what they were communicating clearly fit the pattern of public relations.\u000aEven something as routine as a Twitter feed was needlessly Orwellian. As The Nation ( 4/30/15 ) reported the same week:\u000aMany of the [BPD\u2019s] tweets are written in language that does more to evoke fear and lay blame than to inform. \u201cIn an act of violence and destruction\u2014a group of criminals have set another car on fire at North Avenue and Fulton Ave,\u201d read one tweet. Another: \u201cGroups of violent criminals are continuing to throw rocks, bricks, and other items at police officers.\u201d The word \u201ccriminals\u201d appears over and over again, so often that someone reading the feed could be forgiven for thinking that Baltimore really did turn into a scene from The Purge.\u000aOne tweet in particular became infamous among locals for its Robocop-like tone. The BPD tweeted out, \u201cThere is a group of juveniles in the area of Mondawmin Mall. Expect traffic delays in the area.\u201d As one local resident quickly fired back:\u000a@BaltimorePolice it\u2019s always groups of juveniles they have to get in the bus and go home\u000a\u2014 Khadia (@khadia924) April 27, 2015\u000aThis fact\u2014that there are always young kids at Mondawmin (it\u2019s a major transportation hub, and the only way thousands of kids can get home)\u2014is erased entirely from the equation. The use of the term \u201cjuveniles\u201d is meant to prejudice the reader and criminalize otherwise legal and peaceful assembly. From the beginning of the Baltimore Uprising, in other words, it\u2019s been evident the Baltimore Police Department was far more interested in manipulating the press and hyping the threat than they were protecting First Amendment activity and people\u2019s property.\u000aThe excellent piece of muckraking journalism by Vice and Jason Leopold makes this fact all the more clear.\u000aAdam Johnson is an associate editor at AlterNet and writes frequently for FAIR.org. You can follow him on Twitter at @adamjohnsonnyc .\u000a \u000a
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VBy Jim Naureckas\u000aDylann Roof appears in court: A Washington Post writer argues against calling him a \u201cterrorist.\u201d\u000aCorporate media are demonstrably reluctant to use the word \u201cterrorist\u201d with regards to Charleston shooting suspect Dylann Roof\u2013even though the massacre would seem to meet the legal definition of terrorism, as violent crimes that \u201cappear to be intended\u2026to intimidate or coerce a civilian population.\u201d\u000aGenerally, news outlets don\u2019t explain why they aren\u2019t calling Roof a terrorist suspect; they just rarely use the word. But the Washington Post\u2018s Philip Bump gave it a shot in a piece headlined \u201cWhy We Shouldn\u2019t Call Dylann Roof a Terrorist\u201d ( 6/19/15 ), and his rationale is worth taking a look at.\u000aBump starts out by acknowledging that \u201ca terroristic act, which this was , is treated and identified differently when the actor is a young white man.\u201d He contrasts the treatment of the Charleston massacre with the attack on the Mohammad cartoon contest in Texas:\u000aIn each case, someone hoping to prove a political point attacked a gathering because of who was in attendance. In the case where the only deaths were the attackers, we call it terrorism. In the case where the only deaths were the innocent people, we debate it.\u000a\u201cBut,\u201d Bump then says, \u201cwe shouldn\u2019t call Dylann Roof a terrorist.\u201d His argument for this:\u000aRoof wants to be a terrorist\u2014for us to admit that he terrorized us. He likes the attention, telling the police as he admitted to his acts that he wanted to make sure they were \u201c known .\u201d\u2026 What if we just call him a racist, grotesque person. What if we laughed at him instead of telling him he scared us?\u000aThis makes as much sense as arguing that you shouldn\u2019t charge someone with kidnapping because the person they abducted wasn\u2019t a kid. \u201cTerrorism\u201d is the name of a crime, and the relevant question isn\u2019t whether we like the etymology of the term, but whether the murders fit the elements of the definition\u2014which has to do with intent to intimidate or coerce, not with whether anyone actually felt \u201cterror.\u201d\u000aOn some level, Bump understands that \u201cterrorism\u201d is a legal term with serious legal consequences, and that the fact that it\u2019s unevenly applied based on the race and religion of the perpetrators is a real problem:\u000aWhen Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was arrested in Boston in 2013, the debate was over how to treat him given that he was a terror suspect\u2014as  manifested by Sen. Lindsey Graham \u2014not over whether or not he was a terror suspect. That\u2019s part of why Tsarnaev and the Texas cartoon attackers were so quickly identified as terrorists.\u000aThis, Bump notes, \u201creflects the same racial chasm that Roof wanted to exacerbate.\u201d\u000aHe also notes that the word has become politicized by the \u201cWar on Terror\u201d\u2014\u201dwhich is, in essence, a war on certain groups of Middle Easterners and Muslims.\u201d As Bump observes, \u201cCalling more non-American people terrorists also serves to bolster the arguments of those calling for more military intervention.\u201d Which leads him to conclude that \u201cthe problem\u2026isn\u2019t that we\u2019re too slow to call Roof a terrorist. It\u2019s that we\u2019re often too quick to call everyone else a terrorist.\u201d\u000aYet Bump doesn\u2019t seem to have written a column about how \u201cwe\u2019re too quick to call everyone else a terrorist\u201d; he didn\u2019t seem to have any problem referring to the Boston Marathon bombing as \u201cterrorism,\u201d for example. (\u201cThe key component to any terrorist attack is luck\u201d was the lead sentence for a piece he wrote on the Tsarnaev brothers, for instance\u2014The Wire, 4/22/13 .) So why write this piece, urging people to do what most journalists are already doing\u2014avoiding saying \u201cterrorism\u201d in connection to Charleston?\u000aWashington Post\u2018s Philip Bump: \u201cWhen I see Dylann Roof, I remember being a white male his age\u201d\u000aThe answer seems to be in a remarkably revealing passage in the middle of the piece, where Bump acknowledges that he identifies with Roof because they share a skin color:\u000aMost Americans are white, and we see white people like ourselves. When I see Dylann Roof, I remember being a white male his age, barely out of my teenage years and experiencing weird anger in a difficult time\u2026. We can identify much more easily with who he is.\u000aHuh. You would think a self-respecting journalist, recognizing this kind of irrational bias in himself, would try to avoid letting it influence his work\u2014would certainly not want to call for giving a criminal suspect special journalistic treatment based on this identification. Yet there\u2019s not really any other explanation offered in the column as to why it was written about Roof and not about Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.\u000aBump closes his column by rejecting the arguments that referring to the Charleston massacre as \u201cracial terrorism\u201d would \u201chelp\u2026America come to terms with the fact that the ideology he assumed is dangerous and urgent\u201d and put Roof in line for stiffer penalties. \u201cFine,\u201d he says\u2014but\u000aeach of these is predicated on our insistence that terrorism is somehow a higher order of evil than simply murdering elderly people for being black even as they held their Bibles in a church. It implies that his mass murder was one thing, but that his scaring us was made things more problematic. Perhaps we should demonstrate to him\u2014and every other angry young man like him\u2014that we aren\u2019t scared of his dumb Internet rhetoric. Not in the least.\u000aAnd let\u2019s reel in our use of the word \u201cterrorism\u201d back in.\u000aLet me note parenthetically that the law constantly takes intent into account\u2014it\u2019s the difference between murder and manslaughter, to name just one example\u2014so suggesting that there\u2019s something odd about taking the intent of a murder into account is specious.\u000aBut the real debate here is not about whether terrorism is worse than mass murder with no political motive; it\u2019s whether we\u2019re going to call some acts of politically motivated murder \u201cterrorism\u201d while withholding that label from other murders that are equally politically motivated\u2014when we know that this label has real consequences, legally and politically.\u000a\u201cWe aren\u2019t scared by his dumb Internet rhetoric,\u201d says Bump. If he\u2019s still using \u201cwe\u201d to mean \u201cwhite people like ourselves,\u201d it is  certainly true that whites generally don\u2019t feel personally afraid of white supremacist terrorist who target African-Americans. They\u2019re much more likely to be afraid of Muslim terrorists who target Americans in general\u2014even though right-wing extremists (not all of whom are white supremacists, of course) killed five times as many people in this country as Muslim extremists in the decade after 9/11, according to a study from the  US Military Academy (New York Times, 6/16/15 ).\u000aIf you really think the word \u201cterrorism\u201d is being used too much, you should argue against it in the cases where it\u2019s actually frequently used\u2014which is mostly in cases involving Muslim suspects. But that would mean going against conventional wisdom, possibly with some professional cost. To argue instead that journalists are right to avoid the label with regard to a suspect with whom \u201cwe can identify much more easily\u201d\u2014well, there\u2019s never much of price to be paid for endorsing institutional prejudices.\u000aJim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org .\u000aMessages can be sent to the Washington Post at letters@washpost.com , or via Twitter @washingtonpost . Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.\u000a \u000a
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VBy Dean Baker\u000aTPP supporters claim that over 10 years, the trade pact could increase US GDP by as much as half as much as it was decreased by last winter\u2019s snowy weather. That\u2019s probably overly optimistic.\u000aYes, folks, it\u2019s desperation time for the supporters of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). To get this sucker through, they will say anything, because, hey, making stuff up for the cause always sells in official Washington.\u000aIn his Washington Post column  ( 6/10/15 ), George Will argued for the TPP because we need it to increase growth. He pointed to the 0.7 percent drop in GDP in the first quarter as illustrating the problem. (This decline was, of course, mostly due to the weather , but whatever.)\u000aIf we view this reported drop in GDP as the problem, and the TPP as the solution, then according to the most optimistic estimates available, we will have eliminated roughly half the problem more than a decade from now, when the effects of the TPP are fully felt. According to projections from the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the TPP will eventually increase GDP by 0.38 percentage points.\u000aThis study shows gains that are more than twice as large as an earlier version. An analysis by the United States Department of Agriculture showed minimal gains.\u000aAll these analyses are likely to overstate the gains from the TPP, since none of them factor in the higher costs for drugs and other products as a result of the stronger and longer patent and copyright protections in the TPP. These protections are equivalent to massive tariffs barriers. In the case of prescription drugs, patents can raise the price a hundredfold, the equivalent of a tariff of 10,000 percent. And, as econ textbook fans everywhere know, tariff barriers lead to distortions and corruption .\u000aIt is quite likely that if these higher prices were factored into the analysis, the TPP would be shown to reduce growth. (We spend over $400 billion a year on pharmaceuticals alone, or 2.2 percent of GDP.) But no one would want the evidence to undermine a trade deal that will give more money to rich people.\u000aEconomist Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. A version of this post originally appeared on CEPR\u2019s blog Beat the Press ( 6/11/15 ).\u000aRelated\u000a
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VBy Jim Naureckas\u000aThe New York Times tells you what food products not to eat if you want it to rain more in California. \u000aThe New York Times has an interactive feature (\u201cinteractive\u201d in the sense that some of the graphics are videos that you have to click on to play) about California produce and water. Its headline:\u000aYour Contribution to the California Drought\u000aThis headline comes straight out of the text (by Larry Buchanan, Josh Keller and Haeyoun Park):\u000aThe portions of foods shown here are grown in California and represent what average Americans, including non-Californians, eat in a week. We made an estimate of the amount of water it takes to grow each portion to give you a sense of your contribution to the California drought.\u000aBut the headline is just plain wrong.\u000aPeople eating avocados don\u2019t \u201ccontribute\u201d to California\u2019s drought\u2013even if a sliver of it takes 4.1 gallons of water to produce, as the Times tells us. California\u2019s drought is caused by lower-than-normal precipitation coupled with higher-than-normal temperatures, not by people eating too many grapes (24 gallons for a bunch) or mandarin oranges (42.5 gallons for three).\u000aA drought is not the same thing as a water shortage. If your city was getting plenty of rain but decided to open up its fire hydrants 24/7 and re-landscape its parks with the lagoon look, it could have a water shortage\u2013but it still wouldn\u2019t have a drought.\u000aNow, California\u2019s drought has caused a water shortage\u2013and California\u2019s agriculture uses 80 percent of the state\u2019s available water (Washington Post, 4/3/15 ). So would the feature be fixed with the admittedly less-catchy headline \u201cYour Contribution to California\u2019s Water Shortage\u201d?\u000aThat would be more accurate\u2013but still not very useful. For one thing, the feature is an awkward guide to buying low-water produce, since it\u2019s based on both how much water crops use and how much people eat them on average. For example, a \u201cthin melon slice\u201d is a \u201cwater guzzler\u201d at 1.1 gallons, whereas a \u201ctiny pear wedge\u201d is under \u201cleast water consumption\u201d because it takes only 0.51 gallons. But is that because pears take less water to grow than melons, or because a thin slice is bigger than a tiny wedge? It\u2019s impossible to say.\u000aYou can do the math and figure out that turkey actually does take less water to produce per ounce than beef\u201312.3 vs. 49.1 gallons\u2013but this may not be immediately obvious from the 1/3 ounce and 1.75 ounce portion sizes that the Times uses for comparison purposes.\u000aBut the bigger question is whether blaming consumers for California\u2019s water shortage, and then implying that they ought to selectively boycott (or just feel bad about?) California produce based on its water consumption, is actually a smart approach. It\u2019s very common for corporate media, which are driven by commercial advertising, to emphasize the importance of purchasing choices, thus framing social and environmental problems as a matter of personal virtue or guilt.\u000aBut as Think Progress ( 5/5/15 ) noted in a piece on agriculture and California\u2019s water crisis, it\u2019s not consumer demand that has resulted in California growing so much of the United States\u2019 fruits and vegetables\u2013it\u2019s government policy, including massive subsidies for corn (to be turned mainly into ethanol, corn syrup and animal feed) that have helped destroy once-substantial vegetable operations in the Midwest.\u000aShifting consumer preferences\u2013assuming that the Times feature could steer eaters in  a coherent direction\u2013might encourage farmers to switch from one crop to another, redeploying their water allocations to whichever food products people are eating more of. But only a change in government policies can stop agribusiness from taking as much water as it can\u2013and California Gov. Jerry Brown has so far shown no signs of interest in such a change (LA Times, 4/5/15 ). Absent collective action, the market has a powerful ability to adapt to\u2013and thus negate\u2013individual attempts to undo the damage it inflicts.\u000aThe same is true of your\u2013and my\u2013actual contribution to California\u2019s drought, which is not eating almonds (even at 15.3 gallons of water per 16) but participating in an economy that injects vast amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, creating the changed climate that has led to the region\u2019s worst drought in 1,200 years . Individuals can conserve energy, but without societal action to restrict the burning of fossil fuels, the reduced demand will just lower costs until someone is willing to make use of the supply. That\u2019s what happens when \u201cyour contribution\u201d is reduced to your consumption\u2013as opposed to your participation in democratic action.\u000a \u000aJim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org .\u000aYou can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com , or to public editor Margaret Sullivan at public@nytimes.com  (Twitter: @NYTimes or @Sulliview ). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.\u000aRelated\u000a
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VBy Dean Baker\u000a(cc photo: woodleywonderworks)\u000aThe New York Times ( 6/3/15 ) ran a column by Elysse Cherry, the chief executive of Boston Community Capital, on helping low-income homeowners. The piece includes various proposals designed to help low-income homeowners who were hit by the collapse of the housing bubble, but it also includes the bizarre complaint:\u000aIn many areas, housing prices are stuck below their inflated pre-bubble levels. Until we deal with this fact, entire communities will continue to struggle with high foreclosure rates and a lack of economic mobility\u2026.\u000aHowever, the poorest fifth of Americans already spend more than 40 percent of their income on housing, compared with less than 31 percent for the upper fifth, according to government data . Meanwhile, real wages for most Americans have been flat or falling for decades . Absent an extraordinary increase in income for low-income families, home prices in low-income areas aren\u2019t going anywhere.\u000aThis disparity between high- and low-income neighborhoods is evident in the numbers. The Standard & Poor\u2019s/Case-Shiller National Home Price Index for March was over the March 2004 index, and national median home prices, according to the real estate website Zillow, are just over what they were 10 years ago.\u201d\u000aThere are two problems with this complaint. First, it is factually wrong, or at least misleading. The weak price performance of lower-cost homes depends very much on the time window being considered. If homeowners bought near the peak of the bubble, which disproportionately affected lower-income neighborhoods, then their prices would still be depressed; however, if they bought before the bubble, they would be doing quite well.\u000aIn most of the cities covered in the Case-Shiller tiered price indexes , which show price changes for the lower, middle and high tiers of the housing market, homes in the lower tier have seen the greatest price appreciation since 2000. For example, in New York City, house prices for the bottom tier have risen by 91.3 percent since 2000, compared to 79.5 percent overall. In Los Angeles, home prices in the bottom tier rose by 148.4 percent, compared to 133.7 percent overall. In Boston, home prices in the bottom tier have risen by 106.0 percent, compared to 80.6 percent overall. So unless a lower-income homeowner bought their home near the peak of the bubble, they are doing relatively well with their house price.\u000aThe second and more important problem is that it is bizarre to note that low-income people spend a disproportionate share of their money on housing and then complain about low house prices. If prices of homes in lower-income neighborhoods rise, then future buyers would have to spend an even larger share of their income on housing. This would be a good story for current homeowners, but a very bad story for young people looking to buy in the future.\u000aIt is remarkable that this generational aspect to house prices is almost never discussed in the media\u2013in contrast, for example, to the generational aspects of government debt. High house prices are a direct transfer from future generations of homeowners to the current generation. (It\u2019s the same story with high stock prices.) There is no obvious reason that we should want to see this transfer, which has far greater consequences for the well-being of the young than any remotely plausible story about the government debt. (Ask your favorite news outlet that covers what the Peter Peterson crowd has to say why they never talk about the generational impact of high housing prices.) Anyhow, if we care about lower-income people being able to become homeowners, we should be glad that they don\u2019t have to pay bubble-inflated prices for their homes.\u000aFormer Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner: forgiveness for banks, \u201cOld Testament\u201d for homeowners.\u000aHaving said that, Cherry is absolutely right to complain about the inadequate help provided for those homeowners who were  caught in the bubble. Former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner made the Obama administration\u2019s attitude on this issue very clear in his autobiography. In the book , he repeatedly declares that he was committed to do whatever was necessary in terms of government handouts and support to save the big banks. He derided the critics of this policy as \u201cOld Testament\u201d types who wanted punishment for the banks\u2019 irresponsible and possibly criminal behavior.\u000aIn contrast, when it came to underwater homeowners, Geithner commented that many people had bought homes that were bigger and/or more expensive than they could afford. In other words, he thought it appropriate that the government protect the big banks from the consequences of their behavior, but felt it appropriate that low- and moderate-income homeowners pay the cost of behavior he viewed as irresponsible. The Obama administration\u2019s policy certainly reflected this attitude.\u000aEconomist Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. A version of this post originally appeared on CEPR\u2019s blog Beat the Press ( 6/3/15 ).\u000aYou can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com , or to public editor Margaret Sullivan at public@nytimes.com . Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.\u000aRelated\u000a
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VLindsey Graham, whom the Washington Post calls \u201cThe most interesting presidential candidate you\u2019re not paying any attention to.\u201d (photo: Rainier Ehrhardt/AP)\u000aWashington Post political writer Chris Cillizza thinks you\u2019re not giving Lindsey Graham an even break.\u000aIn a column ( 6/10/15 )  headlined \u201cThe Most Interesting Presidential Candidate You\u2019re Not Paying Any Attention To,\u201d Cillizza bemoans the fact that \u201cGraham is an asterisk\u2014or close to it\u2014in polling in every early state (except for his home state of South Carolina) and nationally.\u201d Graham, he writes, is \u201cgenerally regarded as a cause candidate, with that cause being to represent the most hawkish views on foreign policy and national security against attacks by Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.\u201d\u000aCillizza suggests that\u2019s unfair to Graham, who often uses one of corporate media\u2019s most favorite words\u2014\u201dbipartisanship\u201d:\u000aBut if you stop and actually listen to some of what Graham is saying\u2014particularly on the subject of bipartisanship\u2014you realize that he\u2019s one of the most interesting candidates in the field and one of the few who can genuinely sell himself as a change agent.\u000aWhat is it, exactly, that we\u2019re supposed to listen to Graham saying? Cillizza quotes him telling an audience what he said to a young voter about Social Security:\u000aWhen I talked to that young guy there, I said, you\u2019re going to have to work a little longer, pal. If I\u2019m president, I\u2019m going to ask you to work a little bit longer. What do people do between 65 and 67, they work two years longer. Ronald Reagan and Tip O\u2019Neill showed us what to do.\u000aGraham\u2019s point is that President Reagan and House Speaker O\u2019Neill worked out a bipartisan deal in the 1980s to raise the retirement age, so Democrats should support Graham\u2019s plan to raise the retirement age to 70 so it will be bipartisan too.\u000aCilizza goes on to quote Graham making some pretty bland and innocuous claims\u2014in favor of \u201cproblem-solving\u201d and \u201cworking with Democrats,\u201d  and being willing to \u201cdo whatever is necessary to defend the nation\u201d\u2014and treats them as groundbreaking revelations of a new kind of politics:\u000aIf you believe the American people when they say they want leaders who are willing to work with one another and take positions because they believe in them not because the policies are popular, it\u2019s hard for me to imagine a better message than that paragraph from Graham above.\u000aBut here\u2019s the thing: People don\u2019t like the idea of raising the retirement age. (They\u2019d like it even less if it was accurately described as a cut in benefits, which is what people are actually proposing when they talk about \u201craising the retirement age\u201d\u2014see Extra!,  12/12 .)  When ABC and the Washington Post ( 3/10-13/11 ) asked people about raising the retirement age from 67 to 68, 57 percent were against it. When AP/CNBC ( 11/18-22/10 ) asked about raising it to 69, 64 percent were opposed and only 28 percent in favor.\u000aChris Cillizza (cc photo: Miller Center/Wikimedia)\u000aTo Beltway reporters, who are trained to focus on process, it makes sense to support a policy just because it\u2019s billed as bipartisan\u2014or, in the case of Graham\u2019s Social Security cuts, something that aspires to bipartisanship. But regular people don\u2019t like policies that they see as harming their interests simply because politicians from both parties advocate them, and they certainly don\u2019t like policies that hurt them because a politician says he\u2019s hoping that members of another party will join in the hurting.\u000aCillizza\u2019s other example of Graham\u2019s bipartisanship\u2014actually, his only example, since Graham only wishes his proposal to cut Social Security were bipartisan\u2014is Graham\u2019s support for immigration reform that would give unauthorized immigrants some potential way to get citizenship. This actually is a pretty popular policy\u2013when a CBS/New York Times poll ( 4/30/15-5/3/15 ) asked what should be done about \u201cillegal immigrants,\u201d 57 percent said they should be allowed to stay and apply for citizenship, while only 29 percent said that they should be required to leave. (Eleven percent said they should be allowed to stay but not apply for citizenship.)\u000aThat\u2019s among all US adults, though, and the voters who are making Graham an \u201casterisk\u201d are Republicans\u2013and their views on immigration are decidedly different. Asked by CNN/ORC ( 2/12-15/15 ) to choose between \u201cdeveloping a plan that would allow illegal immigrants who have jobs to become legal U.S. residents\u201d and \u201cdeveloping a plan for stopping the flow of illegal immigrants into the U.S. and for deporting those already here,\u201d 76 percent of Republicans went with stopping/deporting. Again, people who oppose immigration reform are unlikely to switch to supporting it just because they see people from another party supporting it.\u000aCillizza concludes his column with a challenge: Are we as a country wise enough to vote for Lindsey Graham? Or as he puts it:\u000aTo me, though, Graham\u2019s candidacy is a sort of campaign thought experiment: What if politics produced a candidate that had lots and lots of what the public said it wanted but in a somewhat unlikely package (a Southern-drawling lifetime politician) and without the buzz and fanfare that surrounds the so-called \u201ctop tier\u201d?\u000aCould a candidate like that possibly hope to break through?\u000aIt isn\u2019t clear that Graham is really offering \u201clots and lots of what the public said it wanted,\u201d though. The Republican public hasn\u2019t said it wants immigration reform. And the public at large hasn\u2019t said it wants cuts in Social Security benefits\u2014or \u201cthe most hawkish views on foreign policy and national security,\u201d for that matter.\u000aNor, really, is there much evidence that the public is clamoring for \u201cbipartisanship\u201d in the abstract. When asked by Gallup ( 5/6-10/15 ) to name the most important problem facing the US, just 2 percent named \u201cunifying the country\u201d\u2014the closest thing to bipartisanship on the list. By contrast, 33 percent named economic problems, including \u201ceconomy in general,\u201d \u201cunemployment/jobs,\u201d \u201cgap between rich and poor,\u201d etc. When the CBS/New York Times poll ( 1/11-15/09 ) asked people what they most wanted from a newly elected Barack Obama, 2 percent said \u201cbring bipartisanship.\u201d\u000aI expect \u201cbipartisanship\u201d would poll much higher if you polled among Beltway reporters. Unfortunately for Lindsey Graham, Beltway reporters don\u2019t get that many votes.\u000aJim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org.\u000aMessages can be sent to the Washington Post at letters@washpost.com , or via Twitter @washingtonpost . Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.\u000aRelated\u000a
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VBy Dean Baker\u000aThe Washington chattering class is really upset that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) looks like it\u2019s going down. David Brooks pulled out all the stops, using his New York Times column ( 6/16/15 ) to yell at \u201cTea Party\u201d Democrats for not supporting the fast-track authority that would facilitate passage of the TPP.\u000aUnfortunately, Brooks was largely unarmed with facts when it came to the attack. To start, he tells readers;\u000aThe North American Free Trade Agreement, for example, probably didn\u2019t affect the American economy too much. But the Mexican economy has taken off. With more opportunities, Mexican workers feel less need to sneak into the US.\u000aIf the Mexican economy has taken off since NAFTA, they managed to conceal this fact from the IMF and other keepers of official statistics. Here is the path of per capita GDP in the United States and Mexico post-NAFTA:\u000aSource: International Monetary Fund .\u000a \u000aDeveloping countries like Mexico are supposed to have more rapid growth than rich countries like the United States. Instead, the gap has increased by about 5 percentage points, as growth in the US has exceeded growth in Mexico since NAFTA took effect. (The chart shows growth in international dollars, not adjusted for inflation.)\u000aBrooks also seems to be inventive in his assessment of patterns of immigration. According to the Migration Policy Institute , the number of Mexican immigrants to the United States rose from 4.3 million in 1990 to 11.7 million by 2010.\u000aOkay, so maybe Brooks didn\u2019t get NAFTA quite right; let\u2019s see what else he has.\u000aIn Asia, the American-led open trade era has created the greatest reduction in poverty in human history. The Pacific trade deal would lift the living standards of the poorest Asians, especially the 90 million people of Vietnam.\u000aHmmm. Can we really call China and India\u2019s development policies \u201cAmerican-led\u201d? I suspect the people of these huge countries would take some offense at that characterization. Furthermore, neither has come close to following the \u201c Washington Consensus \u201d development path. As far as Vietnam, its per capita income has grown at a 4.8 percent annual rate  over the last decade. It doesn\u2019t look like it is waiting for Congress to approve the TPP to save them.\u000aThen we have David Brooks quoting Tyler Cowan :\u000aDo you get that, progressives? Poorest country = biggest gainer. Isn\u2019t that what we are looking for?\u000aWell, the data may not agree with Mr. Cowan here, at least if we take post-NAFTA Mexico as our model.\u000aAccording to a survey by the University of Chicago\u2019s Booth School of Business , 83 percent of the nation\u2019s leading economists believe that trade deals have been good for most Americans. That\u2019s not quite the level of consensus on man-made global warming, but it is close.\u000aLet\u2019s see\u2013that would be 83 percent of people who did not see the $8 trillion housing bubble that crashed the economy. I hope that the track record of the scientists who write on global warming is a bit better.\u000aThen we have the specific projection of the gains from TPP:\u000aThe authoritative study on the Pacific trade deal, by Peter Petri, Michael Plummer and Fan Zhai, suggests it would raise US incomes by 0.4 percent per year by 2025.\u000aWell, it may not be \u201cauthoritative,\u201d but it is certainly the study showing the largest gains: approximately two months of normal growth\u2013a one-time gain, not year after year\u2013which will be felt by around 2027, after the TPP is fully implemented. The United States Department of Agriculture was somewhat less optimistic, projecting gains to GDP of approximately zero.\u000aBoth of these studies may be overly optimistic in projections of aggregate gains. (They say nothing about distribution.) Neither takes account of higher prices for drugs and other items that would be affected by the stronger and longer patent and copyright protection that is a main part of the TPP.\u000aYes, that is \u201cprotection,\u201d as in protectionism. These government granted monopolies raise the price of the protected items far above the free-market price. To take one example that has been in the news lately, the Hepatitis C drug Sovaldi sell for $84,000 for a 3-month course of treatment in the United States. A high-quality generic version is sold profitably in India for less than $1,000.\u000aIt is estimated that 3 million people in the United States have Hepatitis C. If we could give them all the generic drug rather than pay for the patent-protected version in the US, the savings would be over $240 billion (@ 1.3 percent of GDP). And that is just one drug.\u000aIn this case, the patent protection has the same effect as putting a 10,000 percent tariff on the price of the drug. And all good economists know how bad tariffs are. In addition to raising the price of the product, they encourage corruption, like lying about the safety and effectiveness of protected drugs. It is very likely that a model that included the increased costs associated with stronger and longer patent and copyright protection would show the TPP a loser in terms of GDP growth.\u000aThen we have Brooks telling us to give up on manufacturing jobs:\u000aDemocrats point out that some workers have been hurt by trade deals. And that\u2019s true. Most manufacturing job losses have been caused by technological improvements.But those manufacturing jobs aren\u2019t coming back.\u000aThe best way forward is to increase the number of high-quality jobs in the service sector.\u000aWell, some of us don\u2019t believe in picking winners and losers like Mr. Brooks, but one thing we could do is get a more competitive dollar by discouraging other countries from propping up its value against their own currencies. This is the main factor behind the $500 billion (@ 3 percent of GDP) annual trade deficit in the United States. If the trade deficit were closer to balanced, it would bring back millions of the manufacturing jobs that Brooks apparently does not like. It would also move the economy back toward full employment, strengthening the labor market more generally.\u000aUnfortunately, the Obama administration has not made addressing the trade deficit a priority. (Companies like Walmart and GE benefit from an over-valued dollar, since it allows them to buy and/or produce goods cheaply abroad.) It opted not to make currency values a part of the TPP.\u000aThen, sensing that his economic arguments are likely to fail, Brooks pulls out the bomb (emphasis in original):\u000aImperil world peace. The Pacific region will either be organized by American rules or Chinese rules. By voting against the trade deal, Democrats went a long way toward guaranteeing that Chinese rules will dominate.\u000aGot that\u2013the Chinese are coming. So if we don\u2019t pass a trade pact that will make the countries of Pacific region pay more for our drugs and other protected products, they will all turn to China.\u000aAre you scared yet?\u000aOK, look for more of these hysterical diatribes as the One Percent tries their best to sell the TPP. They have tons of money and power, so they may pull it off, but at least we get the entertainment value of these people making fools of themselves.\u000aEconomist Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. A version of this post originally appeared on CEPR\u2019s blog Beat the Press ( 6/16/15 ).\u000aYou can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com , or to public editor Margaret Sullivan at public@nytimes.com  (Twitter: @NYTimes or @Sulliview ). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.\u000aRelated\u000a
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VBy Adam Johnson\u000aThomas Friedman\u000aToday putative liberal and mustachioed wonker Thomas Friedman (New York Times, 6/3/15 ) did what he does best: take something vaguely topical and use it as a hook to promote whatever topic he and his billionaire friends want to propagandize that week.\u000aWhether it\u2019s advocating collective punishment of Ukrainians to push his CEO friend\u2019s \u201cGreen Energy\u201d IPO during its quiet period, or unironically floating the idea of arming ISIS to demagogue Iran, it\u2019s a tried and true formula for America\u2019s most tedious Important Person.\u000aThis morning, however, Friedman reached a new low, exploiting the Baltimore Uprising to run a rather shameless commercial for his wife\u2019s charter school organization:\u000aOn a warm Saturday in late May 2008, my wife, Ann, talked me into going to an auditorium in Baltimore to watch a lottery. It was no ordinary lottery. Numbered balls were cranked out of a bingo machine, and the winners got a ticket to a better life. It was the lottery to choose the first 80 students to attend a new public college-prep boarding school: the SEED School of Maryland based in Baltimore. ( My wife chairs the foundation behind the SEED schools.) SEED Maryland \u2014 SEED already had a branch in the District of Columbia \u2014 was admitting boys and girls from some of the toughest streets and dysfunctional schools in Maryland, and particularly Baltimore, beginning in sixth grade. Five days a week, they would live at the school in a dormitory with counselors \u2014 insulated from the turmoil of their neighborhoods \u2014 and take buses home on weekends. Last Saturday, I attended the graduation of that first class.\u000aPut another way: Friedman used the most influential media space in the world to run a totally pointless commercial for his wife\u2019s charter school. And it\u2019s OK, because he disclosed the commercial. Sort of\u2014he doesn\u2019t mention that the SEED Foundation lists him and his wife jointly as a million-dollar-plus contributor.\u000aAnn Friedman, previously Ann Bucksbaum, is an heir to a massive  multi-billion-dollar real estate empire . She and Thomas occupy a $9.3 million mansion in Maryland. Like virtually all major charter school backers, they are filthy rich do-goody white people who know what\u2019s best for inner-city youth, in this case those of Baltimore. This is swell as far as it goes\u2014but what does this type of pointless self-promotion have to do with anything? Ah, right, we have to shoehorn in the recent uprising in Baltimore to promote this stale brand of boot-strap neoliberalism.\u000aRight away, Friedman paints the image of the type of PR pablum we\u2019ve grown accustomed to with charter schools\u2019 slick PR packaging: \u201cNumbered balls were cranked out of a bingo machine, and the winners got a ticket to a better life.\u201d Anyone who saw Waiting for Superman knows this dramatic image:\u000aThere\u2019s only one problem: These public lotteries are\u2014and always have been\u2014little more than cynical PR spectacles not required by law, nor serving any purpose other than promotion. This is why they\u2019re largely no longer used by charter schools. As Cynthia McCabe of the NEA noted in 2011:\u000aThe National Alliance for Public Charter Schools in documents advising its member schools states that it \u201cand charter support organizations around the country strongly recommend that schools publicize their lotteries to demonstrate the strong popularity of charter schools.\u201d In a section explaining why these public events are a \u201cwonderful opportunity,\u201d the first benefit given is to \u201cdraw media attention to the demand for high-quality charters.\u201d The document goes on to specify everything from microphone to snack availability (\u201cFamilies will be more likely to attend if you can present them with reasons that entice them\u201d). It advises announcers on what to say when a name is pulled in the lottery. \u201c\u2018Selected\u2019 is preferable to \u2018winning.\u2019\u201d For the vast majority of attendees who will go home without their number having been pulled, NAPCS suggests sending them a thank you letter for attending and \u201cwish them the very best.\u201d\u000aIn other words, the whole exercise is a gratuitous marketing ploy. Or as Friedman\u2019s New York Times colleague Gail Collins put it in 2010:\u000aCharter schools, please, stop. I had no idea you selected your kids with a piece of performance art that makes the losers go home feeling like they\u2019re on a Train to Failure at age 6. You can do better. Use the postal system.\u000aThe point of these lottery spectacles is to paint the image of demand: If something is this \u201cselective,\u201d it must therefore be valuable. Like Friedman\u2019s column, they\u2019re neoliberal agitprop designed to tug at our heartstrings while promoting a radical right-wing privatization agenda . And like Friedman\u2019s column, they\u2019re entirely superfluous. Again, one is compelled to ask: What does any of this have to do with a series of protests and \u201criots\u201d resulting from a murdered black youth?\u000aThe piece reaches peak whitesplaining when pro-charter school Secretary of Education Arne Duncan chimes in and parrots the pernicious trope that the Baltimore Uprising was the result of  \u201cabsent fathers\u201d:\u000aI asked Education Secretary Arne Duncan what he thought generally about the public boarding school model, which is expensive. He said, \u201cSome kids need six hours a day, some nine, some 12 to 13,\u201d but some clearly would benefit from a more \u201c24/7\u201d school/community environment. \u201cI went to Baltimore and talked to teachers after the riots,\u201d Duncan added. \u201cThe number of kids living with no family member is stunning. But who is there 24/7? The gangs. At a certain point, you need love and structure, and either traditional societal institutions provide that or somebody else does. We get outcompeted by the gangs, who are there every day on those corners.\u201d So quality public boarding schools need to be \u201cpart of a portfolio of options for kids.\u201d\u000aThe not-so-subtle implication here: Absent black parents caused the \u201criots.\u201d Not legitimate outrage. Not the brutal killing of a black youth. Not the subsequent lack of an investigation. Not the decades of rampant police abuse. But absent fathers and the catch-all of gangs. This is the type of centrist racist dog-whistling one would expect from the man who once said Hurricane Katrina was \u201cgood for New Orleans\u201d  because it led to more charter schools.\u000aIf only more kids could be funneled into the boarding schools of benevolent billionaires\u2014who, incidentally, get massive tax breaks for running these programs\u2014all would be well with the black community. If only they could educate their way out being targeted by racist police. If only we can keep seeding the Friedmans\u2019 pet projects, we would never need to unearth the sprawling, deeply ingrained roots of racism.\u000aCORRECTION: The Friedmans\u2019 mansion was initially described as being in the wrong state.\u000a \u000aAdam Johnson is a freelance journalist; formerly he was a founder of the hardware startup Brightbox. You can follow him on Twitterat  @AdamJohnsonNYC .\u000aRelated\u000a
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VBy Janine Jackson\u000aMcKinney, Texas, police officer Eric Casebolt subduing a \u201csuspect\u201d (from the video shot by Brandon Brooks)\u000aI often think the clearest glimpse into a media outlet\u2019s view of an issue comes not in the articles that directly engage it, but in the little throwaway descriptions\u2014the shorthand used to sum up the story.\u000aTake a look, then, at this AP wire report ( 6/8/15 ), in which an account of a brutal policing incident at a Texas pool offered this by way of background:\u000aIncidents involving white law enforcement and black suspects have raised concerns across the US, in particular since last August when a white police officer fatally shot a black 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri, fueling sometimes violent protests and a nationwide \u201cBlack Lives Matter\u201d movement.\u000aNo, the \u201cincidents\u201d raising concerns have not involved black \u201csuspects.\u201d   Freddie Gray was not a suspect, nor Akai Gurley . Tamir Rice and John Crawford held toy guns, and Ferguson  officers evidently \u201csuspected\u201d Michael Brown of nothing more than not walking on the sidewalk. A number of those killed have been \u201csuspected\u201d of being mentally ill and in need of help.\u000aAs a matter of fact, the presumption by law enforcement\u2014and media\u2014that any black person involved in an altercation with police must be a criminal suspect is part of the outrage driving public protest.\u000aTelling, too, that in its description of police killings in the news over the last several months\u2014including  one officer who went free after leaping on top of the car of two unarmed black people and firing dozens of bullets into them, and another who saw all charges dropped for a putting a bullet through the head of a 7-year-old girl sleeping on her living room sofa\u2014the only thing AP sees fit to describe as  \u201cviolent\u201d are the protests.\u000aJanine Jackson is FAIR\u2019s program director.\u000a \u000a
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VIs ISIS Now Powerful Enough for Nukes?\u000a\u2014Fox News\u000aOther propaganda claims from this issue of Dabiq would find their way into Western media\u2014namely viral-ready threats to behead President Obama and auction off his wife , First Lady Michelle Obama, to the  sex slave market .\u000aNow, there\u2019s no actual evidence that any of this is anything more than deranged ranting, yet here we are: Millions of casual news observers who scrolled through western media this weekend came away thinking ISIS is plotting to acquire a nuclear bomb, kill the president and prostitute his wife.\u000aFox News participating in an ISIS PR campaign.\u000aThis isn\u2019t the first time the media has engaged in what I call the \u201cNancy Grace Factor\u201d when it comes to ISIS. The Nancy Grace Factor, named after the perpetually indignant cable news host, is when a media outlet ostensibly condemns some terrible\u2014yet titillating\u2014menace while simultaneously trading in its exploits. It permits the pundit to excoriate the subject matter while also feeding its scary details to the rubbernecking masses to drive ratings and traffic.\u000aThis mentality explains most of corporate media\u2019s ISIS coverage and\u2014as is readily apparent by the never-ending stream of snuff films coming from their Al Hayat Media Center \u2014ISIS propagandists as well. The media\u2019s account of the rise of ISIS has uniformly been defined by hyping   its ambition , its scope  and its sheer bad-assery , thus carrying water for ISIS\u2019s core argument that it, and it alone, is the Islamic vanguard against Western colonial aggression.\u000aIndeed, as much ink as has been spilled by corporate media pearl-clutching the \u201c threat of the ISIS propaganda machine \u201d and ISIS\u2019s unstoppable \u201c Twitter army ,\u201d what\u2019s never mentioned is that by sheer reach , the vast majority of ISIS propaganda is, in fact, disseminated by corporate media themselves.\u000aISIS, like any good troll, requires predictable outrage from the trollee in order to justify its troll strategy.  For example, the primary source for almost all of the ISIS propaganda videos, Rita Katz of SITE Intelligence Group, feverishly demands  Twitter ban jihadi social media (though presumably not the ones created by the FBI or DoD ) while routinely tweeting out ISIS propaganda in its rawest form. Does the average giddy jihadists care how their fear goes viral? Of course not. Just as Kim Kardashian parlayed our collective indignation over her sex tape into a $130 million empire , so ISIS uses our own media outrage machine against us\u2014enhancing its brand with each condemnation.\u000aBut ISIS propaganda is newsworthy, you say. Yes. The fact of propaganda is, of course, newsworthy, but the actual images and videos are, in most contexts, nothing more than pornography. Even setting aside something as goofy as this weekend\u2019s idle threats, actually newsworthy pieces of propaganda like the beheading videos are covered by Western press like a medieval public execution spectacle.  Any murder is newsworthy; this doesn\u2019t mean media need to show images of said murder on a loop to report the fact of this murder. That they do\u2014with no apparent news value beyond conveying how savage ISIS is\u2014belies their ostensibly journalistic motive.\u000aSeveral outlets, like the New York Times and NPR , have been incrementally less terrible at this, skirting the Nancy Grace Factor and down playing the gruesome visuals. But this is likely more a product of medium rather than editorial discretion. Visual-heavy TV news and news tabloid outfits almost to a tee  showed no such prudence , running the horrific images of Foley\u2019s death nonstop:\u000a \u000aBut why? The irony is that in all ISIS \u201cbeheading videos\u201d\u2014except  one \u2014the actual beheading is never shown. Whoever edits these snuff films, from some reason, cuts away right before the actual act of violence and fades to the brutal aftermath, followed by a long-winded speech and Islamist chanting; in this sense, the editors at CNN and CBS showed about as much discretion as ISIS themselves.\u000aIndeed, given that Fox News ran the Jordanian pilot torching video in its entirety , it\u2019s possible the only thing preventing corporate media from actually showing the beheadings themselves is that no such footage is actually provided by our bloodthirsty yet squeamish terrorists. But the logic is the same. For the same reason that the threat of torture is legally indistinguishable from torture itself, the trauma of showing the images to the runup to the killing are as effective as the showing of the killing itself. As such, media\u2019s constant use of pre-execution b-roll, the quivering testimony of the the victim, and the focus on the executioner\u2019s ideology has just as much recruiting purchase for ISIS as simply reposting the video itself. The actual violence, as both Western media and ISIS alike understand, is incidental.\u000aIt\u2019s an obvious moral hazard that\u2019s been simmering under the surface since this whole ISIS phenomenon began\u2014having been briefly touched upon by MSNBC\u2019s Chris Hayes and Fox News\u2019 Laura Ingraham last February. As Heather Digby Patron would note in Salon :\u000aFor months [Hayes] has been making the case that this lurid coverage is not only creating the conditions for war without any proper debate, it\u2019s playing into the terrorists\u2019 hands. When Fox\u2019s Bill O\u2019Reilly recently declared that we are in a \u201cHoly War\u201d with Islam, Hayes said on his program :\u000a\u201cThat sort of rhetoric is, of course, exactly what ISIS wants. For if this is a Holy War, they aren\u2019t some murderous cult or some fringe Sunni militia. No, if it\u2019s a Holy War, then they are the representatives of Islam, which is why the president at today\u2019s summit on countering violent extremism was so careful not to cast the fight on those terms.\u201d\u000aThese terrorists produce this propaganda for recruitment purposes but produce them with slick production values for US and other Western media in order to try to make the US the common enemy of all Islam.  Hayes is one of the only cable news hosts to explicitly challenge not only the Holy War meme, but the reaction of the media to every alleged threat.\u000aBut he is on the same page with one very unlikely Fox News personality. Here\u2019s Laura Ingraham, of all people, talking about the shopping mall threat assessment:\u000a\u201cI don\u2019t think we should jump every time the freaks with the Ace bandages around their faces put out videos.\u2026 I think we should have a mature debate about how to secure the Homeland without changing our way of life.\u201d\u000aSo where does this leave us? The solution seem readily apparent: If the media really wanted to prevent the dissemination of ISIS propaganda, they could stop disseminating ISIS propaganda. It\u2019s really that simple. Report the substance\u2014\u201cJames Foley Has Died,\u201d \u201cISIS Releases Another Propaganda Magazine\u201d\u2014but avoid the smutty details, the empty threats and, above all, the titillating visuals.\u000aThere will no doubt be three main objections to this proposal:\u000aBut media can\u2019t conspire to not cover something!\u000aWrong. They do this all the time, as a matter of course. The media, for example, have a widespread policy against publishing rape accusers\u2019 names. This policy is a common-sense restriction media have informally imposed on themselves with the understanding that publicity not only traumatizes those who have been raped, but discourages future survivors from coming forward. It\u2019s an admission that their industry can have harmful externalities in their narrow pursuit of a \u201cstory.\u201d The name of the accuser typically has no news value and the reporting of the rape is not enhanced by the divulging of this information. On balance, therefore, avoiding this detail is seen as being in the greater public interest. The same is true for the weaponization of mass media by ISIS.\u000aBut if someone wants to find ISIS propaganda they will.\u000aGreat, then let them. If one actively pursues damn near anything on the internet, you can find it. This doesn\u2019t mean major media outlets need to tee it up to the otherwise distracted and disinterested masses and radically amplify ISIS\u2019s core propaganda memes.\u000aEven if the media ignores ISIS\u2019 social media propaganda, this won\u2019t make it go away\u000aOf course it won\u2019t! But it will take away one of its primary avenues of dissemination.\u000aThe question media need to ask themselves is this: Is the average \u201cimpressionable\u201d Sunni Muslim in London or Brussels or New York more likely to be introduced to the ISIS spectacle via a random jihadist on Twitter (the average of which has 1,014  followers ) or from CNN, which  reaches 387 million homes worldwide and gets over 14 million clicks a day? The answer, mathematically speaking, is of course the latter. Indeed, one can even trace the popularity of so-called ISIS social media propagandist by their corollary appearances in western media.\u000aRadical imam Anjem Choudary\u2019s traditional media appearances greatly boosted his social media profile.\u000aConsider the case of UK radical imam Anjem Choudary. During the escalation of the US war against ISIS in fall of 2014, the greatest thing that ever happened to his social media brand was his numerous appearances on corporate media\u2014from CNN to Fox News to the Washington Post to the highest-rated news program on television, CBS\u2019s 60 Minutes . His Twitter following, according archive records, more than doubled from August to November thanks to this exposure.\u000aWhat caused this sudden surge in popularity? The answer, to anyone who\u2019s taken Public Relations 101, is obvious: There is no such thing as bad publicity, and the Choudarys of the world know this. The \u201crise\u201d of these radical trolls is inextricably linked to their ability to provoke media into \u201cconfronting\u201d them.\u000aTerrorism\u2014to the extent the term has any meaning\u2014is a fundamentally postmodern crime . To have any economy of scale, terrorism needs as many people to be \u201cterrorized\u201d as possible, which necessarily requires a mass media apparatus to disseminate this terror\u2014otherwise the PR value of an act of terror does not justify the relatively small death count. The rise of terrorism, as such, directly tracks to the rise of mass communication. This is why one doesn\u2019t hear much about medieval militants blowing up markets: Absent mass media, it\u2019s not a very good use of resources.\u000aAl Qaeda, for example, sacrificed a handful of commandos and a few million dollars on an act of violence that killed 3,000 people\u2013approximately 0.2 percent of the total deaths caused by the US in its responses to this attack ( estimated at 1.3 million). Yet here we are, 14 years on, and the US is still bogged down in a multi-theater war against an indefinable enemy that has cost the nation $5 trillion dollars with no end in sight.\u000aJihadists long ago learned to weaponize our own media against us. The question is: At what point will our media stop serving its predictable role as far-right Islam\u2019s No. 1 recruiting tool?\u000aAdam Johnson is a freelance journalist; formerly he was a founder of the hardware startup Brightbox. You can follow him on Twitter at  @AdamJohnsonNYC .\u000a \u000aFiled Under: Blog , zHome , zMail Tagged With: ISIS\u000aFacebook Likes\u000a
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VMax Boot |  @MaxBoot\u000a06.07.2015 - 2:30 PM\u000aGlenn Greenwald, Ed Snowden\u2019s amanuensis, has gone ballistic over my blog post about Snowden\u2019s emetic New York Times op-ed . He claims , with his typical flair for understatement, that I am guilty of propagating \u201clies\u201d when I wrote that, in his op-ed, Snowden lacked the courage to criticize the surveillance apparatus erected by his host, Vladimir Putin, which is far vaster and more intrusive than those that he attacks in the Western democracies. In fact, Greenwald claims that Edward Snowden is far more courageous than I am because he \u201csacrificed his liberty and unraveled his life in pursuit of his beliefs.\u201d\u000aSo Snowden is supposed to be the embodiment of bravery even though \u2014 unlike, say, Daniel Ellsberg \u2014 he is not willing to face a fair trial in the United States, which, in contrast to Russia, has an independent justice system? Instead, he fled to Moscow where he lives in gilded comfort under the protection of the tyrannical Putin and his secret police.\u000aGreenwald claims that Snowden \u201cunraveled his life\u201d in pursuit of The Truth, but in fact what he did was to give up an anonymous existence as a low-level drone in a dead-end government job to become a global celebrity who is feted by the likes of Glenn Greenwald and accorded space to expound his views in the pages of the world\u2019s most prestigious newspapers. Who, a few years ago, would have cared what Ed Snowden thought? Now, it seems, far too many people do. Who says crime doesn\u2019t pay?\u000aSnowden, after all, isn\u2019t exactly shivering in Siberia and surviving on black bread and swamp water. He is living a comfortable existence, presumably at the expense of the Russian government, in one of the world\u2019s most expensive cities with ritzy restaurants, chi chi shops, and chic bars galore. He has even been joined in his luxurious exile by his girlfriend. This isn\u2019t bravery. It\u2019s grandstanding without paying the price \u2014 without, that is, risking a lengthy jail term for the crimes that Snowden has plainly committed.\u000aAs for the substance of Snowden\u2019s article, Greenwald is right that I missed one brief passing mention of Russia. Snowden did applaud products offering encryption from companies such as Apple. \u201cSuch structural technological changes can ensure access to basic privacies beyond borders, insulating ordinary citizens from the arbitrary passage of anti-privacy laws, such as those now descending upon Russia,\u201d Snowden wrote.\u000aI\u2019m not sure what \u201canti-privacy laws\u201d are or how laws \u201cdescend\u201d \u2014 on parachutes? In the real world, laws are passed or promulgated by someone. In the West, they come from elected legislators. In Russia, from the Kremlin and Putin\u2019s rubber stump Duma. Perhaps that\u2019s Snowden\u2019s gentle way of alluding (without mentioning Putin\u2019s name) to the growing tyranny of Russia\u2019s president, who is surveilling his citizens like crazy and crushing dissent in the best Soviet tradition. But, yes, it\u2019s true that there was one mention of Russia\u2014one of the world\u2019s most egregious dictatorships \u2014 amid an article that spends the other 99% of its verbiage decrying supposed intrusions on privacy in the United States and other Western democracies. And I\u2019m sorry I missed it. But that\u2019s called an omission or an oversight \u2014 it\u2019s not a \u201clie.\u201d\u000aLikewise, Greenwald makes much of the fact that Snowden published an article in the Guardian last year entitled, \u201cVladimir Putin must be called to account for surveillance just like Obama.\u201d I didn\u2019t see this article, but it\u2019s hardly the full-throated assault on Putin that the Guardian headline-writers made it out to be. It\u2019s all about a question Snowden was permitted to ask Putin at a carefully choreographed televised forum staged by Putin to glorify himself: \u201cDoes [your country] intercept, analyse or store millions of individuals\u2019 communications?\u201d Putin denied it \u2014 an obvious lie \u2014 but instead of saying so forthrightly, Snowden merely wrote that Putin\u2019s answer was \u201csuspiciously narrow\u201d and \u201cevasive.\u201d \u201cIn fact,\u201d he continued, \u201cPutin\u2019s response was  remarkably similar  to Barack Obama\u2019s initial, sweeping denials of the scope of the NSA\u2019s domestic surveillance programs, before that position was later shown to be both untrue and indefensible.\u201d\u000aThat is moral equivalence at its most untrue and indefensible. There is no comparison between the brutal dictatorship that Putin created and the liberal democracy of which Barack Obama is the elected leader. The State Department\u2019s 2014 Human Rights Report lists a long litany of abuses committed by Snowden\u2019s hosts.\u000aA few highlights:\u000aDuring the year Russia adopted laws that impose harsh fines for unsanctioned meetings; identify nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) as \u201cforeign agents\u201d if they engage in \u201cpolitical activity\u201d while receiving foreign funding; suspend NGOs that have U.S. citizen members or receive U.S. support and are engaged in \u201cpolitical activity\u201d or \u201cpose a threat to Russian interests\u201d; recriminalize libel; allow authorities to block Web sites without a court order; and significantly expand the definition of treason. Media outlets were pressured to alter their coverage or to fire reporters and editors critical of the government\u2026\u000aDue process was denied during the detentions and trials of protesters arrested following the May 6 demonstration in Moscow in which a small group of the protestors engaged in violence; in the detention, trial, and sentencing of the members of the punk rock group Pussy Riot, who were charged with hooliganism motivated by religious hatred; and searches and criminal cases lodged against several political activists. Individuals responsible for the deaths of prominent journalists, activists, and whistleblowers, notably Sergey Magnitskiy, have yet to be brought to be brought to justice.\u000aOther problems reported during the year included: allegations of torture and excessive force by law enforcement officials; life-threatening prison conditions; interference in the judiciary and the right to a fair trial; abridgement of the right to privacy; restrictions on minority religions; widespread corruption; societal and official intimidation of civil society and labor activists; limitations on the rights of workers; trafficking in persons; attacks on migrants and select religious and ethnic minorities; and discrimination against and limitation of the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons. The government failed to take adequate steps to prosecute or punish most officials who committed abuses, resulting in a climate of impunity.\u000aAnd that\u2019s to say nothing of Putin\u2019s invasion of Ukraine, his illegal annexation of Crimea, his minions\u2019 shoot-down of a civilian airliner, the rape of Chechnya, and other war crimes too numerous to mention.\u000aWhen Ed Snowden publicly denounces in plain language these and other civil liberties abuses committed by his Russian hosts \u2014 well, then I will have been proved wrong about his hypocrisy. But Snowden\u2019s mealy-mouthed suggestions that perhaps there\u2019s more to Russian mass surveillance than Putin lets on or that there may be some problems with Russian \u201canti-privacy laws\u201d are hardly evidence that he is willing to bite the hand that feeds him.\u000aThe larger points in my blog post stand: that Snowden has diminished our security against terrorist attack, that he is a traitor (not a word I use lightly or often), and that he is selective and hypocritical in his outrage, focusing his ire on the US, where there are ample civil liberties safeguards on government surveillance, while living as a guest of a despotic state that tramples on the liberty of its citizens and invades its neighbors.\u000a
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VBy Jim Naureckas\u000aThe New York Times illustrated Peter Wehner\u2019s piece with a stretched-out donkey. A load of bull would have been more appropriate. (graphic: Matt Chase)\u000a\u201cHave Democrats Pulled Too Far Left?\u201d asks a New York Times op-ed ( 5/27/15 ). Because this question is always answered affirmatively by corporate media, you don\u2019t even have to note that the author, Peter Wehner, \u201cserved in the last three Republican administrations\u201d to know that the answer is going to be yes.\u000aDespite the predictable thesis, however, the column still manages to surprise with its degree of intellectual dishonesty. Wehner\u2019s thesis is that Barack Obama has \u201cmoved to the left\u201d compared to \u201ccentrist New Democrat\u201d Bill Clinton. But whenever Wehner makes a claim that can be checked\u2014that isn\u2019t simply empty rhetoric, like his assertion that Obama \u201chas often acted as if American strength is a problem\u201d\u2014again and again it turns out to involve some numbers game.\u000aTake Wehner\u2019s claim that while Clinton\u000aendorsed a sentencing policy of \u201cthree strikes and you\u2019re out,\u201d\u2026Obama\u2019s former attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., criticized what he called \u201cwidespread incarceration\u201d and championed the first decrease in the federal prison population in more than three decades.\u000aYou\u2019d never know from that that the federal prison population is 48 percent bigger under the \u201cleft\u201d Obama than it was when centrist Clinton left office .\u000a\u201cMr. Clinton lowered the capital-gains tax rate; Mr. Obama has proposed raising it,\u201d Wehner says. Clinton lowered the rate capital gains were taxed at to 20 percent; under Obama it went up\u2014to 20 percent.\u000a\u201cMr. Clinton cut spending and produced a surplus,\u201d writes Wehner. \u201cUnder Mr. Obama, spending and the deficit reached record levels.\u201d From 1993 through 2000, Clinton reduced the US budget imbalance as a proportion of US GDP by 6 percentage points; from 2009 through 2014, Obama reduced it by 7 percentage points.\u000aWehner adds as \u201canother bellwether\u201d the fact that Hillary Rodham Clinton \u201cis decidedly more liberal than she and her husband once were.\u201d One example of this: \u201cShe has remained noncommittal on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the free-trade agreement that has drawn ire from the left\u201d\u2014but which has been strenuously pushed by Barack Obama, though Wehner does not acknowledge this as evidence of Obama\u2019s centrism.\u000aBut perhaps the most deceptive part of Wehner\u2019s op-ed is when he blames Obama\u2019s supposed shift to the left for the failing fortunes of the Democratic Party:\u000aAfter two enormous losses by Democrats in the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections, Republicans control the Senate and the House of Representatives. There are currently 31 Republican governors compared with 18 for Democrats\u2026. The Obama years have been politically good for Mr. Obama; they have been disastrous for his party.\u000aSurely Wehner remembers that after the first half of Clinton\u2019s first term, Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate for the remainder of his administration\u2014 exactly as happened under Obama. There were 30 Democratic governors when Clinton took office, and 19 when he left; there were 29 when Obama took office, and currently there\u2019s 18.\u000aIt\u2019s true that Obama has been been bad news for his party\u2014but as FAIR has long pointed out , that\u2019s true of Clinton as well. An honest appraisal of the administrations of both Clinton and Obama, with their emphasis on deficit-cutting and corporate-friendly trade deals, reveals both Democrats to be establishment centrists\u2014and centrist politics, contrary to what the punditocracy would have you believe, do not have a particularly winning record at the ballot box.\u000aYou can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com , or to public editor Margaret Sullivan at public@nytimes.com . Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.\u000aRelated\u000a
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S'Fears, Not Facts, Support G.M.O.-Free Food. Despite much evidence that genetically modified organisms help make what we eat safer and healthier, more people are looking for food without them.'
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VNYT Scrapes the Bottom to Argue \u2018Democrats Pulled Too Far Left\u2019\u000aby\u000a22 Comments\u000aToo far left? Ridiculous. "An honest appraisal of the administrations of both Clinton and Obama, with their emphasis on deficit-cutting and corporate-friendly trade deals, reveals both Democrats to be establishment centrists\u2014and centrist politics, contrary to what the punditocracy would have you believe, do not have a particularly winning record at the ballot box." (Image: CD)\u000a\u201cHave Democrats Pulled Too Far Left?\u201d asks a New York Times op-ed ( 5/27/15 ). Because this question is always answered affirmatively by corporate media, you don\u2019t even have to note that the author, Peter Wehner, \u201cserved in the last three Republican administrations\u201d to know that the answer is going to be yes.\u000aDespite the predictable thesis, however, the column still manages to surprise with its degree of intellectual dishonesty. Wehner\u2019s thesis is that Barack Obama has \u201cmoved to the left\u201d compared to \u201ccentrist New Democrat\u201d Bill Clinton. But whenever Wehner makes a claim that can be checked\u2014that isn\u2019t simply empty rhetoric, like his assertion that Obama \u201chas often acted as if American strength is a problem\u201d\u2014again and again it turns out to involve some numbers game.\u000aTake Wehner\u2019s claim that while Clinton\u000aendorsed a sentencing policy of \u201cthree strikes and you\u2019re out,\u201d\u2026Obama\u2019s former attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., criticized what he called \u201cwidespread incarceration\u201d and championed the first decrease in the federal prison population in more than three decades.\u000aYou\u2019d never know from that that the federal prison population is 48 percent bigger under the \u201cleft\u201d Obama than it was when centrist Clinton left office .\u000a\u201cMr. Clinton lowered the capital-gains tax rate; Mr. Obama has proposed raising it,\u201d Wehner says. Clinton lowered the rate capital gains were taxed at to 20 percent; under Obama it went up\u2014to 20 percent.\u000a\u201cMr. Clinton cut spending and produced a surplus,\u201d writes Wehner. \u201cUnder Mr. Obama, spending and the deficit reached record levels.\u201d From 1993 through 2000, Clinton reduced the US budget imbalance as a proportion of US GDP by 6 percentage points; from 2009 through 2014, Obama reduced it by 7 percentage points.\u000aWehner adds as \u201canother bellwether\u201d the fact that Hillary Rodham Clinton \u201cis decidedly more liberal than she and her husband once were.\u201d One example of this: \u201cShe has remained noncommittal on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the free-trade agreement that has drawn ire from the left\u201d\u2014but which has been strenuously pushed by Barack Obama, though Wehner does not acknowledge this as evidence of Obama\u2019s centrism.\u000aBut perhaps the most deceptive part of Wehner\u2019s op-ed is when he blames Obama\u2019s supposed shift to the left for the failing fortunes of the Democratic Party:\u000aAfter two enormous losses by Democrats in the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections, Republicans control the Senate and the House of Representatives. There are currently 31 Republican governors compared with 18 for Democrats\u2026. The Obama years have been politically good for Mr. Obama; they have been disastrous for his party.\u000aSurely Wehner remembers that after the first half of Clinton\u2019s first term, Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate for the remainder of his administration\u2014 exactly as happened under Obama. There were 30 Democratic governors when Clinton took office, and 19 when he left; there were 29 when Obama took office, and currently there\u2019s 18.\u000aIt\u2019s true that Obama has been been bad news for his party\u2014but as FAIR has long pointed out , that\u2019s true of Clinton as well. An honest appraisal of the administrations of both Clinton and Obama, with their emphasis on deficit-cutting and corporate-friendly trade deals, reveals both Democrats to be establishment centrists\u2014and centrist politics, contrary to what the punditocracy would have you believe, do not have a particularly winning record at the ballot box.\u000a© 2014 Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)\u000aJim Naureckas is editor of EXTRA! Magazine at FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting) . He is the co-author of Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error , and co-editor of The FAIR Reader. He is also the co-manager of FAIR's website.\u000aShare This Article\u000a
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VNYT Reports Large Crowds for Sanders in Iowa\u2013but Isn\u2019t He \u2018Unelectable\u2019?\u000aby\u000a5 Comments\u000aThe New York Times reports that Bernie Sanders is drawing large crowds in Iowa\u2013but warns that Iowans may find him \u201cunelectable.\u201d  (Photo: Ryan Hendrikson/NYT)\u000aReporting on the large crowds attracted by Sen. Bernie Sanders\u2019 presidential campaign in Iowa, the New York Times\u2018 Trip Gabriel and Patrick Healy ( 5/31/15 ) stressed that former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is \u201cfar ahead in the polls, fundraising and name recognition,\u201d and added:\u000aHer mix of centrist and progressive Democratic views may yet prove more appealing to the broadest number of party voters as well, while some of Mr. Sanders\u2019 policy prescriptions \u2014 including far higher taxes on the wealthy and deep military spending cuts \u2014 may eventually persuade Democrats that he is unelectable in a general election.\u000aIt sounds like it\u2019s the New York Times that\u2019s hoping to persuade Democrats that Sanders is unelectable.\u000aWe Interrupt This Article with an Urgent Message!\u000aCommon Dreams is a not-for-profit organization. We fund our news team by pooling together many small contributions from our readers. No advertising. No selling our readers\u2019 information. No reliance on big donations from the 1%. This allows us to maintain the editorial independence that our readers rely on. But this media model only works if enough readers pitch in.\u000aWe urgently need your help today.\u000aIf you support Common Dreams and you want us to survive, your gift today is critical.\u000aPlease give now to our Mid-Year Fundraiser!\u000aAs we\u2019ve noted (FAIR Blog, 4/20/15 ), the idea of raising the taxes of the rich is quite popular with the US public. Gallup has been asking folks since 1992 how they feel about how much \u201cupper-income people\u201d pay in taxes, and 18 times in a row a solid majority has said the rich pay too little. For the past four years, either 61 or 62 percent have said the wealthy don\u2019t pay enough; it\u2019s hard to figure why Iowans would conclude that Sanders is \u201cunelectable\u201d because he takes the same position on tax hikes for the wealthy as three out of every five Americans.\u000aMeanwhile, the position that upper-income people pay too little in taxes has never been endorsed by more than 15 percent of Gallup respondents\u2014and it\u2019s usually 10 percent or less. Yet you won\u2019t see the New York Times declaring Republican candidates \u201cunelectable\u201d for advocating tax cuts for the wealthy.\u000aCutting the military budget isn\u2019t as popular as taxing the rich, but it\u2019s by no means unpopular. It\u2019s not a question pollsters often ask about\u2014almost as if levels of military spending aren\u2019t seen as a fit subject for public debate\u2014but in 2013 Pew asked which was more important, \u201ctaking steps to reduce the budget deficit or keeping military spending at current levels.\u201d Fifty-one percent said reducing the deficit; only 40 percent chose maintaining the military budget.\u000aIn February 2014, the last time Gallup polled on whether spending \u201cfor national defense and military purposes\u201d was \u201ctoo little, about the right amount, or too much,\u201d a plurality of 37 percent picked \u201ctoo much.\u201d Only 28 percent said \u201ctoo little\u201d\u2013but again, you\u2019re never going to see the New York Times declare a candidate to be \u201cunelectable\u201d for proposing to raise the Pentagon\u2019s budget.\u000aMoyers & Co. ( 6/1/15 ) carried a well-documented post by Juan Cole that challenged corporate media headlines about Sanders\u2019 \u201codd views\u201d:\u000aBut Sanders\u2019 positions are quite mainstream from the point of view of the stances of the American public in general. Of course, the 1 percent, for whom and by whom most mainstream media report, are appalled and would like to depict him as an outlier.\u000aColumbia Journalism Review ( 5/21/15 ) also had a piece by Steve Hendricks that challenged the conventional wisdom that Sanders \u201ccan\u2019t win\u201d\u2014suggesting that establishment media like the New York Times were trying to make this a self-fulfilling prophecy:\u000aThe Times, for example, buried his announcement on page A21, even though every other candidate who had declared before then had been put on the front page above the fold. Sanders\u2019 straight-news story didn\u2019t even crack 700 words, compared to the 1,100 to 1,500 that Marco Rubio , Rand Paul , Ted Cruz  and Hillary Clinton got. As for the content, the Times\u2019 reporters declared high in Sanders\u2019 piece that he was a long shot for the Democratic nomination and that Clinton was all but a lock. None of the Republican entrants got the long-shot treatment, even though Paul, Rubio and Cruz were generally polling fifth, seventh and eighth among Republicans before they announced.\u000aNot convinced that the Times is trying to play down Sanders\u2019 candidacy? That report from Iowa included this as an explanation for why he was drawing crowds: \u201cSome Democrats also simply want to send a warning shot to Mrs. Clinton to get her to visit here more.\u201d\u000aLeave it to the New York Times to offer crowds at Bernie Sanders events as evidence of enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton.\u000a© 2014 Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)\u000aJim Naureckas is editor of EXTRA! Magazine at FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting) . He is the co-author of Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error , and co-editor of The FAIR Reader. He is also the co-manager of FAIR's website.\u000aShare This Article\u000a
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VBy Jim Naureckas\u000aPolitifact offered this as an image of the kind of mass violence that it\u2019s \u201cmostly false\u201d to say happens more frequently in the United States. (Curtis Compton/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/TNS)\u000aIn theory, factchecking is one of the most important functions of journalism. In practice, systematic efforts by corporate media to \u201cfactcheck\u201d political statements are often worse than useless .\u000aTake PolitiFact, a project of the Tampa Bay Tribune, and its recent offering \u201cIs Barack Obama Correct That Mass Killings Don\u2019t Happen in Other Countries?\u201d ( 6/22/15 ).\u000aThe first thing to note is that isn\u2019t what Obama said. The statement that PoltiFact\u2018s Keely Herring and Louis Jacobson \u201cfactchecked\u201d was this:\u000aNow is the time for mourning and for healing. But let\u2019s be clear: At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn\u2019t happen in other places with this kind of frequency. And it is in our power to do something about it.\u000aIt\u2019s generally understood that when people make a series of statements, they\u2019re referring to the same reality in each statement\u2014so you interpret their statements so that they make sense as a whole. But that\u2019s not how PolitiFact interprets statements; instead, it analyzes each sentence in isolation. For example, it says it rated Obama\u2019s statement as \u201cMostly False,\u201d because\u2014taken on its own\u2014Obama\u2019s statement that \u201cthis type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries\u201d is not true. Never mind that \u201cthe White House argues that Obama\u2019s second sentence qualifies the first,\u201d as PolitiFact acknowledges; that\u2019s how ordinary people interpret language, not media factcheckers.\u000aPolitiFact also has doubts about the other part of Obama\u2019s remarks\u2013that  mass violence \u201cdoesn\u2019t happen in other places with this kind of frequency\u201d\u2014because if you take the number of people killed in mass violence and divide by total population, you find that there\u2019s a handful of countries\u2014notably Norway, where 67 people were killed in a single mass-shooting incident \u2014where people have died at a higher rate in shooting sprees between 2000 and 2014:\u000a\u201cThe fact that three other countries exceeded the United States using this method of comparison does weaken Obama\u2019s claim that \u2018it doesn\u2019t happen in other places with this kind of frequency,'\u201d PolitiFact says.\u000aNow, it seems to me that PolitiFact is confusing the ideas of frequency and rate: One would normally say that murders happen more frequently in New York City than in Indianapolis, because New York has more murders in a year, and that Indianapolis has a higher homicide rate than New York City, because Indianapolis has more murders per year per person. That, I submit, is the ordinary way that English-speaking people use those terms.\u000aBut whether or not it\u2019s possible to use frequency as synonymous with rate, it\u2019s obvious that that\u2019s not how Obama was using the word. It\u2019s clear that he was using a common definition of the word (\u201cthe number of times that something happens during a particular period\u201d\u2014 Merriam-Webster ) to indicate that mass violence occurs much more often in the United States than in other advanced countries. Which it does, as the chart above demonstrates\u201322 times more often than any other country listed.\u000aAgain, ordinary people understand that words can have various meanings and figure out which one the speaker intends, whereas media factcheckers first decide what a word means and then figure out if what the speaker intends to convey fits with the meaning the factcheckers have decided to use.\u000aThis is the approach by which the president can state that mass violence \u201cdoesn\u2019t happen in other places with this kind of frequency,\u201d a factchecking organization can turn up data showing that there were 133 mass-shooting incidents in the United States over a 15-year period vs. six in the country with the second-highest number of shooting sprees\u2014and conclude from this that the president\u2019s statement is \u201cMostly False.\u201d\u000aObviously, this is not at all helpful to the US public, who have a vital interest in knowing whether mass violence occurs more frequently in their country than elsewhere. It is, however, a big help in maintaining PolitiFact\u2018s brand as a nonpartisan factchecking service. Fellow media factchecker Brooks Jackson (of FactCheck.org) explained how the gig works (Extra!, 12/12 ):\u000aEven if we could come up with a scholarly and factual way to say that one candidate is being more deceptive than another, I think we probably wouldn\u2019t just because it would look like we were endorsing the other candidate.\u000aOr as Peter Hart concluded from Jackson\u2019s explanation of how media factcheckers work:\u000aThey are people who carefully arrange each chip in an effort to create the illusion that they let the chips fall where they may.\u000aJim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org .\u000aMessages to PolitiFact can be sent  here  (or via Twitter @PolitiFact ). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.\u000aRelated\u000a
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VBy Shane Smith\u000aThe day after 21-year-old Dylann Roof allegedly gunned down nine members of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, a historic black church in Charleston, S.C., the coverage of the coverage was already piling up, much of it lamenting the apparent pass the media was giving Roof.\u000aDespite the fact that the attack meets the textbook definition of terrorism, critics noted that the press was, by and large, not identifying Roof as a terrorist:\u000a\u201cListen to major outlets, and you won\u2019t hear the word \u2018terrorism\u2019 used in coverage of Wednesday\u2019s shooting\u201d ( Anthea Butler in the Washington Post);\u000a\u201cWhen US citizens \u2026 appear to be \u2018normal,\u2019 that is white and/or Christian, terroristic violence is rarely labeled as such, even when the political roots of the killing are clear\u201d ( Robert Jensen , quoted in the International Business Times);\u000a\u201c#CharlestonShooting terrorist wore an Apartheid flag on his jacket. If a Muslim man wore an ISIS flag, he wouldn\u2019t get past mall security\u201d ( Samuel Sinyangwe on Twitter, quoted in the New York Times);\u000a\u201cFew media sources use the term [terrorism] for violent actors motivated by, for example, white supremacy or anti-government rage\u201d ( Brian Phillips interviewed by the Washington Post\u2019s Monkey Cage blog);\u000a\u201cIt leaves us with the question of whether or not there is a disconnect between how black and white people view violence against black bodies\u201d ( Terrell Jermaine Starr in AlterNet);\u000a\u201cDon\u2019t call this the act of a madman. It is an insult to those battling mental illness and it is also a degree of deference you never saw given to men like Osama Bin Laden\u201d ( Shaun King republished in Daily Kos).\u000aItems in this vein have continued to crop up over the ensuing days.\u000aSahara Reporters\u2018 clear-eyed first account of the Charleston massacre ( 6/18/15 )\u000aYet there was at least one news item that ran the day after the shooting that was not afraid to refer to it as a terrorist attack: \u201cUS State Senator Killed by Terrorist With White Supremacist Sympathies, 8 Others Dead,\u201d reads the headline of a news item that appeared on Sahara Reporters , a New York City-based news website that primarily covers government corruption in Africa, with a particular focus on Nigeria.\u000aThe Sahara Reporters piece uses the word \u201cterrorist\u201d six times to describe Roof and his alleged action, including in the headline, the subhead and a photo caption. The words \u201cmental illness,\u201d \u201ctroubled\u201d and \u201cloner\u201d do not appear \u2014 in fact, no speculation whatsoever is made regarding Roof\u2019s mental state or stability. Instead, South Carolina\u2019s \u201cknown hate groups\u201d are mentioned to provide context for Roof\u2019s alleged actions, and Roof\u2019s white supremacist activities and the historic allusions made by the patches on his jacket are front and center in the piece. And the massacre is clearly contextualized as occurring at \u201ca time where the persecution of black ethnic minorities in the United States has been making world headlines.\u201d\u000aThe piece\u2019s distinctiveness from typical US reports on the attack doesn\u2019t end there. The story\u2019s lead prominently identifies Clementa Pinckney, the church\u2019s pastor and one of the shooting victims, as a South Carolina state senator. While it seems clear at this point that Roof targeted Emanuel AME in part because of its history as a center of black resistance to white supremacy, it is not apparent that Roof was targeting Pinckney personally or because of his office. But one might expect the highly unusual fact of an elected official being killed in a terrorist attack to feature prominently in coverage\u2013as it likely would have, had a white politician been killed by a person of color.\u000aThe straighforwardness of the reporting in the Sahara Reporters piece makes it easy to identify what many observers have asserted is missing from the US media\u2019s coverage. Perhaps it\u2019s not surprising to see an outlet that frequently covers Nigeria\u2013which, after all, has some experience with ethnically motivated violence\u2013get it right. Sahara Reporters earned wide notice in 2009 for publishing the first photo of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called \u201cunderwear bomber\u201d of Northwest Flight 253, and again in 2011 for breaking news , reactions  and photos of the car-bombing of a United Nations outpost in Abuja, Nigeria.\u000aJournalists covering stories like Charleston, Ferguson and Baltimore\u2013and other racial flashpoints that will undoubtedly continue to explode\u2013would do well to take notes.\u000a \u000aShane Smith (Twitter: @JShaneSmith ) is a freelance writer based in Jersey City,  N.J.\u000aRelated\u000a
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VSen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., smiles as he is asked about running for president during a news conference on Capitol Hill. (Credit: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)\u000aThis article originally appeared on AlterNet .\u000aVermont Senator Bernie Sanders has been in the race for over a month, but to the casual media consumer you\u2019d hardly notice. His candidacy has largely been dismissed by the mainstream media as a \u201c protest\u201d campaign  or a  means  of \u201cmoving Clinton to the left\u201d (whatever that means). It\u2019s a stunted worldview that presumes it\u2019s the media\u2019s job to vet \u201cserious\u201d candidates before the voters get to have any say in the matter. And because fundraising precedes voting, it inevitably becomes a power-serving and harmful tautology: the media insists Sanders is not a \u201cserious\u201d challenger because Clinton has  big money support ; they then internalize this conventional wisdom, and before a single vote is cast, dismiss him. It\u2019s a perverse feedback loop that puts undue influence in the hands of early power signifiers and bears little resemblance to a healthy democracy.\u000aHere are four ways the media has embraced this toxic logic and how it manifests in their coverage of the Vermont senator.\u000a1. Ignoring Sanders outright.\u000aAs liberal media watchdogs Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (disclosure: I occationally write for FAIR) and Media Matters have noticed on several occasions, Bernie Sanders is routinely ignored by the press despite drawing large crowds and ushering in  impressive fundraising totals . Two recent examples are a May 26 5,000-strong rally that was  barely covered  by the mainstream media, and a nearly nine-month stint of  not being mentioned  by establishment Sunday morning gatekeeper Meet the Press. While the quantity of coverage of Sanders\u2019 campaign has increased a bit, due largely to  pushback from the aforementioned organizations, the quality is still very much wanting.\u000a2. Discussing his candidacy entirely in the context of Hillary Clinton.\u000aOne of the stranger tics our pundit classes and establishment journalists display is to think of Sanders only as bad cop to Clinton\u2019s good cop; that his value matters only to the extent to which he can effect the Clinton machine. This was on full display in a  New York Times piece  two weeks ago that somehow interpreted Sanders\u2019 large crowds as a manifestation of Hillary ambivalence, rather than support for Sanders: \u201cJudging from Mr. Sanders\u2019s trip here last week, there is real support for his message \u2014 though some Democrats also simply want to send a warning shot to Mrs. Clinton to get her to visit here more.\u201d\u000aIn a piece ostensibly about Bernie Sanders, Clinton\u2019s name was mentioned roughly as many times as Sanders\u2019 was. Even his first major  media appearance  on ABC\u2019s This Week after his announcement in May was framed by the host as \u201cHow will this affect Clinton?\u201d After opening up with his case for being president, focusing on how the billionaire class owns our political process, the very first followup question by (former Clinton aide) George Stephanopoulos was, \u201cDoes this mean you think Clinton is part of the billionaire class?\u201d Before he could even get out his reasons for why you should vote for Sanders, he\u2019s already asked to explain why one shouldn\u2019t vote for Hillary Clinton. This also extends to the torrent of articles about whether Sanders will \u201c hurt\u201d  or \u201c help \u201d Clinton, as if the Democratic primary has been foretold by scripture. None of these hot takes, however, posit whether Clinton is helping or hurting Sanders.\u000a3. Six months before the first primary vote, insisting he can\u2019t win despite rising poll numbers.\u000aIn one of the laziest sleights, the media has a terrible habit of asserting Sanders \u201ccan\u2019t win\u201d or is not a \u201crealistic\u201d candidate. Perhaps Sanders is a long shot, but the media shouldn\u2019t play kingmaker and decide the veracity of candidates long before the public has had a chance to weigh in. The polls consistently show  Sanders, at the least, gaining traction and eating into Clinton\u2019s considerable lead. As FAIR  noted  last week, the New York Times has a strange fetish over the \u201cis he electable\u201d question, framing a Sanders rally as such:\u000aYou Might Also Like\u000a[Clinton\u2019s] mix of centrist and progressive Democratic views may yet prove more appealing to the broadest number of party voters as well, while some of Mr. Sanders\u2019 policy prescriptions \u2014 including far higher taxes on the wealthy and deep military spending cuts \u2014 may eventually persuade Democrats that he is unelectable in a general election.\u000aBut as FAIR would point out, this is counter to everything we know:\u000aIt sounds like it\u2019s the New York Times that\u2019s hoping to persuade Democrats that Sanders is unelectable.\u000aAs we\u2019ve noted (FAIR Blog,  4/20/15 ), the idea of raising the taxes of the rich is quite popular with the US public. Gallup has been  asking folks since 1992 how they feel about how much \u201cupper-income people\u201d pay in taxes, and 18 times in a row a solid majority has said the rich pay too little. For the past four years, either 61 or 62 percent have said the wealthy don\u2019t pay enough; it\u2019s hard to figure why Iowans would conclude that Sanders is \u201cunelectable\u201d because he takes the same position on tax hikes for the wealthy as three out of every five Americans.\u000aThis brings us to the last, and most frustrating entry.\u000a4. Presenting Sander\u2019s entirely mainstream views as fringe.\u000aDespite years of corporate media arguing otherwise, Americans really aren\u2019t  conservative . They self-identify as \u201cconservative,\u201d but when asked about major progressive policy issues, from  taxation  to  war  to  marriage equality , they are overwhelmingly in sync with Senator Sanders. Yet the media consistently claims Sanders is somehow to the left of mainstream opinion when he manifestly is not. Sanders is a sitting U.S. senator who has repeatedly won as a progressive independent with 60%+ of the vote in a state that, while generally liberal, had a Republican governor  from 2003-2011 . Even setting aside ideology, there\u2019s little empirical evidence Sanders\u2019 positions are in any way outside the mainstream. Vermont may lean slightly to the left, but it\u2019s not any more liberal than the Illinois Obama represented in 2007.\u000aThere are plenty of good policy reason to oppose Sanders. Some have argued he\u2019s too conservative on  guns  and  Israel . Others on the left argue he\u2019s too compromised by the establishment. Commentators such as Charles Davis arguing his  run is a distraction  for progressives while more traditional socialists like Bruce Dixon of the Black Agenda Report  view his campaign  as a cynical \u201csheep dogging\u201d exercise designed to channel progressives into the Clinton machine. These are all fair, substantive critiques of Sanders and worthy of discussion. Yet that\u2019s not how his campaign is being framed, it\u2019s being framed as a combination of novelty sideshow and horse race speculation. Having an insular media class debate, ad nauseum, over whether Sanders can defeat Clinton in primaries that are many months away does a disservice to the voters and our  already teetering  institutions of democracy. Let\u2019s be critical of Sanders, absolutely. But let\u2019s be critical of him as a presidential candidate, not his hypothetical inability to win an election the public has yet to consider, much less chime in on.\u000a
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VBy Dean Baker\u000aNPR warns listeners that \u201cthe federal government is still adding to its overall debt\u201d\u2013even though the economy could actually benefit from increased deficit spending. (photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)\u000aBillionaire Pete Peterson is spending lots of money to get people to worry about the debt and deficits, and National Public Radio is doing its part to try to promote Peterson\u2019s cause with a Morning Edition piece that began by telling people that the next president \u201cwill have to wrestle with the federal debt.\u201d\u000aThis is not true, but Peterson apparently hopes that he can distract the public from the factors that will affect their lives, most importantly the upward redistribution of income, and obsess on the country\u2019s relatively small deficit. (A larger deficit right now would actually promote growth and employment.)\u000aAccording to the projections from the Congressional Budget Office, interest on the debt will be well below 2.0 percent of GDP when the next president takes office. This is lower than the interest burden faced by any pre-Obama president since Jimmy Carter. The interest burden is projected to rise to 3.0 percent of GDP by 2024 when the next president\u2019s second term is ending, but this would still be below the burden faced by President Clinton when he took office.\u000aFurthermore, the reason for the projected rise in the burden is a projection that the Federal Reserve Board will raise interest rates. If the Fed kept interest rates low , then the burden would be little changed over the course of the decade. Of course, the Fed\u2019s decision to raise interest rates will have a far greater direct impact on people\u2019s lives than increasing interest costs for the government. (The president appoints seven of the 12 voting members of the Fed\u2019s Open Market Committee that sets interest rates.)\u000aThe reason the Fed raises interest rates is to slow the economy and keep people from getting jobs. This will prevent the labor market from tightening, which will prevent workers from having enough bargaining power to get pay increases. In that case, the bulk of the gains from economic growth will continue to go to those at the top end of the income distribution.\u000aThe main reason that we saw strong wage growth at the end of the 1990s was that Alan Greenspan ignored the accepted wisdom in the economics profession, including among the liberal economists appointed to the Fed by President Clinton, and allowed the unemployment rate to drop well below 6.0 percent. At the time, almost all economists believed that if the unemployment rate fell much below 6.0 percent, inflation would spiral out of control. The economists were wrong; inflation was little changed even though the unemployment rate remained below 6.0 from the middle of 1995 until 2001, and averaged just 4.0 percent for all of 2000. (Economists, unlike custodians and dishwashers, suffer no consequence in their careers for messing up on the job.)\u000aAnyhow, if the Fed raises interest rates to keep the labor market from tightening, as it did in the late 1990s, this would effectively be depriving workers of the 1.0-1.5 percentage points in real wage growth they could expect if they were getting their share of productivity growth. This is like an increase in the payroll tax of 1.0-1.5 percentage points annually. Over the course of a two-term president, this would be the equivalent of an 8.0-12.0 percentage point increase in the payroll tax.\u000aThat would be a really big deal. But Pete Peterson and apparently NPR would rather have the public worry about the budget deficit.\u000aEconomist Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. A version of this post originally appeared on CEPR\u2019s blog Beat the Press ( 5/28/15 ).\u000aMessages can be sent to the NPR here , or via Twitter @NPR . Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.\u000aRelated\u000aFiled Under: Blog , zHome , zMail Tagged With: Economy , NPR\u000aFacebook Likes\u000a
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VPrint\u000a(updated below)\u000aIn the neocon journal Commentary , Max Boot today complains that the New York Times published an op-ed by Edward Snowden . Boot\u2019s objection rests on his accusation that the NSA whistleblower is actually a \u201ctraitor.\u201d In objecting, Boot made these claims:\u000aOddly enough nowhere in his article \u2014 which is datelined Moscow \u2014 does he mention the surveillance apparatus of his host, Vladimir Putin, which far exceeds in scope anything created by any Western country. . . .That would be the same FSB that has taken Snowden into its bosom as it has previously done (in its earlier incarnation as the KGB) with previous turncoats such as Kim Philby. . . .\u000aBut of course Ed Snowden is not courageous enough, or stupid enough, to criticize the dictatorship that he has defected to. It\u2019s much easier and safer to criticize the country he betrayed from behind the protection provided by the FSB\u2019s thugs. The only mystery is why the Times is giving this traitor a platform.\u000aIt is literally the supreme act of projection for Max Boot to accuse anyone of lacking courage, as this particular think tank warmonger is the living, breathing personification of the unique strain of American neocon cowardice . Unlike Snowden \u2014 who sacrificed his liberty and unraveled his life in pursuit of his beliefs \u2014 the 45-year-old Boot has spent most of his adult life advocating for one war after the next, but always wanting to send his fellow citizens of his generation to die in them, while he hides in the comfort of Washington think tanks, never fighting them himself.\u000aAll of that is just garden-variety neocon cowardice, and it\u2019s of course grotesque to watch someone like this call someone else a coward. But it\u2019s so much worse if he lies when doing so. Did he do so here? You decide. From Snowden\u2019s NYT op-ed today:\u000aBasic technical safeguards such as encryption \u2014 once considered esoteric and unnecessary \u2014 are now enabled by default in the products of pioneering companies like Apple, ensuring that even if your phone is stolen, your private life remains private. Such structural technological changes can ensure access to basic privacies beyond borders, insulating ordinary citizens from the arbitrary passage of anti­ privacy laws, such as those now descending upon Russia.\u000aThe meaning of that passage \u2014 criticisms of Russia\u2019s attack on privacy \u2014 is so clear and glaring that it caused even  Time magazine to publish this today :\u000aThe first sentence of Time\u2019s article: \u201cFormer CIA officer and NSA contractor Ed Snowden has taken a surprising swing at his new home, accusing Russia of \u2018arbitrarily passing\u2019 new anti-privacy laws.\u201d  In other words, in the very op-ed to which Boot objects, Snowden did exactly that which Boot accused him of lacking the courage to do: \u201ccriticize\u201d the country that has given him asylum.\u000aThis is far from the first time Snowden has done exactly that which the Tough and Swaggering Think Tank Warrior proclaimed Snowden would never do. In April, 2014, Snowden wrote an op-ed in The Guardian under this headline:\u000aWith Max Boot\u2019s above-printed accusations in mind, just re-read that. Did Boot lie? To pose the question is to answer it. Here\u2019s part of what Snowden wrote in that op-ed:\u000aOn Thursday, I questioned Russia\u2019s involvement in mass surveillance on live television. . . . I went on to challenge whether, even if such a mass surveillance program were effective and technically legal, it could ever be morally justified. . . . In his response, Putin denied the first part of the question and dodged on the latter. There are serious inconsistencies in his denial.\u000aIn countless speeches, Snowden has said much the same thing: that Russian spying is a serious problem that needs investigation and reform, and that Putin\u2019s denials are not credible. Boot simply lied about Snowden.\u000aIt\u2019s not surprising that someone whose entire adult life is shaped by extreme cowardice would want to accuse others of lacking courage, as it distracts attention away from oneself and provides the comfort of company. Nor is it surprising that government-loyal journalists spew outright falsehoods to smear whistleblowers. But even neocon rags like Commentary shouldn\u2019t be able to get away with this level of blatant lying.\u000aUPDATE: In typical neocon fashion, Boot first  replies by minimizing his own error to a mere innocent oversight, and implying that only hysteria could cause anyone to find what he did to be problematic. Even then, the facts negate his self-justification. But then he says he was actually right all along and his \u201cpoint stands\u201d:\u000aBeing a neocon coward means never having to admit error.\u000aPhoto: Michael Buckner/Getty Images for SXSW\u000aEmail the author: glenn.greenwald@theintercept.com\u000a
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V\u2014Fox News\u000a \u000aOther propaganda claims from this issue of Dabiq would find their way into Western media\u2014namely viral-ready threats to behead President Obama and auction off his wife , First Lady Michelle Obama, to the  sex slave market .\u000aNow, there\u2019s no actual evidence that any of this is anything more than deranged ranting, yet here we are: Millions of casual news observers who scrolled through western media this weekend came away thinking ISIS is plotting to acquire a nuclear bomb, kill the president and prostitute his wife.\u000aThis isn\u2019t the first time the media has engaged in what I call the \u201cNancy Grace Factor\u201d when it comes to ISIS. The Nancy Grace Factor, named after the perpetually indignant cable news host, is when a media outlet ostensibly condemns some terrible\u2014yet titillating\u2014menace while simultaneously trading in its exploits. It permits the pundit to excoriate the subject matter while also feeding its scary details to the rubbernecking masses to drive ratings and traffic.\u000aThis mentality explains most of corporate media\u2019s ISIS coverage and\u2014as is readily apparent by the never-ending stream of snuff films coming from their Al Hayat Media Center \u2014ISIS propagandists as well. The media\u2019s account of the rise of ISIS has uniformly been defined by hyping   its ambition , its scope  and its sheer bad-assery , thus carrying water for ISIS\u2019s core argument that it, and it alone, is the Islamic vanguard against Western colonial aggression.\u000aIndeed, as much ink as has been spilled by corporate media pearl-clutching the \u201c threat of the ISIS propaganda machine \u201d and ISIS\u2019s unstoppable \u201c Twitter army ,\u201d what\u2019s never mentioned is that by sheer reach , the vast majority of ISIS propaganda is, in fact, disseminated by corporate media themselves.\u000aISIS, like any good troll, requires predictable outrage from the trollee in order to justify its troll strategy.  For example, the primary source for almost all of the ISIS propaganda videos, Rita Katz of SITE Intelligence Group, feverishly demands  Twitter ban jihadi social media (though presumably not the ones created by the FBI or DoD ) while routinely tweeting out ISIS propaganda in its rawest form. Does the average giddy jihadists care how their fear goes viral? Of course not. Just as Kim Kardashian parlayed our collective indignation over her sex tape into a $130 million empire , so ISIS uses our own media outrage machine against us\u2014enhancing its brand with each condemnation.\u000aBut ISIS propaganda is newsworthy, you say. Yes. The fact of propaganda is, of course, newsworthy, but the actual images and videos are, in most contexts, nothing more than pornography. Even setting aside something as goofy as this weekend\u2019s idle threats, actually newsworthy pieces of propaganda like the beheading videos are covered by Western press like a medieval public execution spectacle.  Any murder is newsworthy; this doesn\u2019t mean media need to show images of said murder on a loop to report the fact of this murder. That they do\u2014with no apparent news value beyond conveying how savage ISIS is\u2014belies their ostensibly journalistic motive.\u000aSeveral outlets, like the New York Times and NPR , have been incrementally less terrible at this, skirting the Nancy Grace Factor and down playing the gruesome visuals. But this is likely more a product of medium rather than editorial discretion. Visual-heavy TV news and news tabloid outfits almost to a tee  showed no such prudence , running the horrific images of Foley\u2019s death nonstop:\u000a But why? The irony is that in all ISIS \u201cbeheading videos\u201d\u2014except  one \u2014the actual beheading is never shown. Whoever edits these snuff films, from some reason, cuts away right before the actual act of violence and fades to the brutal aftermath, followed by a long-winded speech and Islamist chanting; in this sense, the editors at CNN and CBS showed about as much discretion as ISIS themselves.\u000aIndeed, given that Fox News ran the Jordanian pilot torching video in its entirety , it\u2019s possible the only thing preventing corporate media from actually showing the beheadings themselves is that no such footage is actually provided by our bloodthirsty yet squeamish terrorists. But the logic is the same. For the same reason that the threat of torture is legally indistinguishable from torture itself, the trauma of showing the images to the runup to the killing are as effective as the showing of the killing itself. As such, media\u2019s constant use of pre-execution b-roll, the quivering testimony of the the victim, and the focus on the executioner\u2019s ideology has just as much recruiting purchase for ISIS as simply reposting the video itself. The actual violence, as both Western media and ISIS alike understand, is incidental.\u000aIt\u2019s an obvious moral hazard that\u2019s been simmering under the surface since this whole ISIS phenomenon began\u2014having been briefly touched upon by MSNBC\u2019s Chris Hayes and Fox News\u2019 Laura Ingraham last February. As Heather Digby Patron would note in Salon :\u000aFor months [Hayes] has been making the case that this lurid coverage is not only creating the conditions for war without any proper debate, it\u2019s playing into the terrorists\u2019 hands. When Fox\u2019s Bill O\u2019Reilly recently declared that we are in a \u201cHoly War\u201d with Islam, Hayes said on his program :\u000a\u201cThat sort of rhetoric is, of course, exactly what ISIS wants. For if this is a Holy War, they aren\u2019t some murderous cult or some fringe Sunni militia. No, if it\u2019s a Holy War, then they are the representatives of Islam, which is why the president at today\u2019s summit on countering violent extremism was so careful not to cast the fight on those terms.\u201d\u000aThese terrorists produce this propaganda for recruitment purposes but produce them with slick production values for US and other Western media in order to try to make the US the common enemy of all Islam.  Hayes is one of the only cable news hosts to explicitly challenge not only the Holy War meme, but the reaction of the media to every alleged threat.\u000aBut he is on the same page with one very unlikely Fox News personality. Here\u2019s Laura Ingraham, of all people, talking about the shopping mall threat assessment:\u000a\u201cI don\u2019t think we should jump every time the freaks with the Ace bandages around their faces put out videos.\u2026 I think we should have a mature debate about how to secure the Homeland without changing our way of life.\u201d\u000aSo where does this leave us? The solution seem readily apparent: If the media really wanted to prevent the dissemination of ISIS propaganda, they could stop disseminating ISIS propaganda. It\u2019s really that simple. Report the substance\u2014\u201cJames Foley Has Died,\u201d \u201cISIS Releases Another Propaganda Magazine\u201d\u2014but avoid the smutty details, the empty threats and, above all, the titillating visuals.\u000aThere will no doubt be three main objections to this proposal:\u000aBut media can\u2019t conspire to not cover something!\u000aWrong. They do this all the time, as a matter of course. The media, for example, have a widespread policy against publishing rape accusers\u2019 names. This policy is a common-sense restriction media have informally imposed on themselves with the understanding that publicity not only traumatizes those who have been raped, but discourages future survivors from coming forward. It\u2019s an admission that their industry can have harmful externalities in their narrow pursuit of a \u201cstory.\u201d The name of the accuser typically has no news value and the reporting of the rape is not enhanced by the divulging of this information. On balance, therefore, avoiding this detail is seen as being in the greater public interest. The same is true for the weaponization of mass media by ISIS.\u000aBut if someone wants to find ISIS propaganda they will.\u000aGreat, then let them. If one actively pursues damn near anything on the internet, you can find it. This doesn\u2019t mean major media outlets need to tee it up to the otherwise distracted and disinterested masses and radically amplify ISIS\u2019s core propaganda memes.\u000aEven if the media ignores ISIS\u2019 social media propaganda, this won\u2019t make it go away\u000aOf course it won\u2019t! But it will take away one of its primary avenues of dissemination.\u000aThe question media need to ask themselves is this: Is the average \u201cimpressionable\u201d Sunni Muslim in London or Brussels or New York more likely to be introduced to the ISIS spectacle via a random jihadist on Twitter (the average of which has 1,014  followers ) or from CNN, which  reaches 387 million homes worldwide and gets over 14 million clicks a day? The answer, mathematically speaking, is of course the latter. Indeed, one can even trace the popularity of so-called ISIS social media propagandist by their corollary appearances in western media.\u000aConsider the case of UK radical imam Anjem Choudary. During the escalation of the US war against ISIS in fall of 2014, the greatest thing that ever happened to his social media brand was his numerous appearances on corporate media\u2014from CNN to Fox News to the Washington Post to the highest-rated news program on television, CBS\u2019s 60 Minutes . His Twitter following, according archive records, more than doubled from August to November thanks to this exposure.\u000aWhat caused this sudden surge in popularity? The answer, to anyone who\u2019s taken Public Relations 101, is obvious: There is no such thing as bad publicity, and the Choudarys of the world know this. The \u201crise\u201d of these radical trolls is inextricably linked to their ability to provoke media into \u201cconfronting\u201d them.\u000aTerrorism\u2014to the extent the term has any meaning\u2014is a fundamentally postmodern crime . To have any economy of scale, terrorism needs as many people to be \u201cterrorized\u201d as possible, which necessarily requires a mass media apparatus to disseminate this terror\u2014otherwise the PR value of an act of terror does not justify the relatively small death count. The rise of terrorism, as such, directly tracks to the rise of mass communication. This is why one doesn\u2019t hear much about medieval militants blowing up markets: Absent mass media, it\u2019s not a very good use of resources.\u000aAl Qaeda, for example, sacrificed a handful of commandos and a few million dollars on an act of violence that killed 3,000 people\u2013approximately 0.2 percent of the total deaths caused by the US in its responses to this attack ( estimated at 1.3 million). Yet here we are, 14 years on, and the US is still bogged down in a multi-theater war against an indefinable enemy that has cost the nation $5 trillion dollars with no end in sight.\u000aJihadists long ago learned to weaponize our own media against us. The question is: At what point will our media stop serving its predictable role as far-right Islam\u2019s No. 1 recruiting tool?\u000a© 2014 Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)\u000aAdam Johnson is a freelance journalist based in New York. His work can be found on his website, Citations Needed . Follow him on Twitter: @adamjohnsonnyc\u000aShare This Article\u000a
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S'Corrections: June 16, 2015. Corrections appearing in print on Tuesday, June 16, 2015.'
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VMax Boot |  @MaxBoot\u000a06.05.2015 - 2:30 PM\u000aWould the New York Times have run an op-ed from Iva Toguri (Tokyo Rose) criticizing America\u2019s World War II policies? From Aldrich Ames criticizing America\u2019s cold war policies? Or from Khalid Sheikh Muhammad criticizing America\u2019s policies in the war on terror?\u000aThe Times just did the equivalent by running an op-ed by an author identified as follows : \u201cEdward J. Snowden, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer and National Security Agency contractor, is a director of the  Freedom of the Press Foundation .\u201d A more accurate description would be \u201cEdward J. Snowden, a defector to Vladimir Putin\u2019s Russia who betrayed the trust placed in him by the US government, is\u2026\u201d\u000aBut what\u2019s more eye-rolling than the identification of the op-ed is the substance of it. Edward Snowden, you see, is taking a victory lap. He begins by saying that he wasn\u2019t sure his revelations\u2014a.k.a. his criminal disclosures of vital American national security secrets\u2014would have much of an impact. But he\u2019s happy to see he was wrong: \u201cIn a single month, the N.S.A.\u2019s invasive call-tracking program was declared unlawful by the courts and disowned by Congress. After a White House-appointed oversight board investigation found that this program had not stopped a single terrorist attack, even the president who once defended its propriety and criticized its disclosure has now ordered it terminated.\u201d\u000aSnowden is right\u2014he did trigger a backlash against the NSA\u2019s surveillance. But that\u2019s hardly cause for celebration because the NSA is our front-line defense against terrorists. Snowden is responsible for neutering the metadata program that the former CIA acting director says could have prevented 9/11 . All of the lawmakers who just voted against reauthorizing the Patriot Act should understand how happy their vote has made this traitor.\u000aBut Snowden is untroubled by the implication of his actions. He is positively reveling in his global celebrity, which has come about because of his crimes. He is determined to roll back government surveillance powers and avers himself dismayed that legislatures in Australia, Canada, and France are expanding surveillance powers to fight terrorism. (His tendentious rendering of that is to write: \u201cSpymasters in Australia, Canada and France have exploited recent tragedies to seek intrusive new powers despite evidence such programs would not have prevented attacks.\u201d)\u000aOddly enough nowhere in his article \u2014 which is datelined Moscow \u2014 does he mention the surveillance apparatus of his host, Vladimir Putin, which far exceeds in scope anything created by any Western country. As the Daily Beast noted , \u201cThe FSB has far more power to eavesdrop on Russian and foreign citizens than the FBI or the NSA.\u201d That would be the same FSB that has taken Snowden into its bosom as it has previously done (in its earlier incarnation as the KGB) with previous turncoats such as Kim Philby.\u000aAnd, of course, there are no legal safeguards on government surveillance in Russia. Whatever Putin wants, he can do. Another difference: Whereas in the US, surveillance is strictly targeted to catch terrorists, in Russia it\u2019s used to catch anyone who dares to criticize Putin\u2019s rule, much less to rally fellow citizens to seek a change of government.\u000aBut of course Ed Snowden is not courageous enough, or stupid enough, to criticize the dictatorship that he has defected to. It\u2019s much easier and safer to criticize the country he betrayed from behind the protection provided by the FSB\u2019s thugs. The only mystery is why the Times is giving this traitor a platform.\u000a
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VBy Jim Naureckas\u000aCIA chief John Brennan, GOP politician Jeb Bush\u2013to CBS, this represents \u201call segments of American life.\u201d\u000aBob Schieffer kicked off his final show as host of CBS\u2018s Face the Nation ( 5/31/15 ) with a clip of what he said on his first show 24 years ago:\u000aOur aim is going to be very simple here, to find interesting people from all segments of American life who have something to say and give them a chance to say it.\u000aThe Washington Post\u2018s Michelle Ye Hee Lee ( 5/31/15 ), reviewing Schieffer\u2019s last broadcast, wrote:\u000aAnd Schieffer remained true to the tradition on his final broadcast, giving guests who had something to say \u2014 former Florida governor Jeb Bush, CIA Director John Brennan and a panel of journalists \u2014 a chance to say it.\u000aThe idea that the establishment\u2019s favorite right-wing presidential candidate and the head of the CIA qualify as \u201cinteresting people from all segments of American life\u201d can only make sense in the insular world of Beltway journalism.\u000aAt CBS News, they do really seem to believe that an obsessive, nearly exclusive focus on the most prominent members political class is consistent with a commitment to showcasing the views of \u201call segments of American life\u201d; at least, they used that same introductory quote to illustrate what kind of journalist Schieffer was on the occasion of his 20th anniversary, in 2011 (CBSNews.com, 9/21/15 ). Producer Robert Hendin then proudly launched into a recitation of who had actually been featured on Face the Nation over the previous two decades:\u000aTo celebrate Bob\u2019s 20th Anniversary, we went through the files and looked at exactly who he\u2019s had on the broadcast. Here\u2019s a look at Bob Schieffer\u2019s 20 years at Face the Nation by the numbers:\u000aBob has interviewed:\u000aThree presidents of the United States, four vice presidents, seven secretaries of state, six secretaries of Defense and 45 different cabinet members. He\u2019s also interviewed 123 senators and 109 different representatives.\u000aOf those, a few notable names come up more frequently than others: Vice President Joe Biden has been interviewed by Bob on Face the Nation 46 times. House Speaker John Boehner, seven times. Former Vice President Dick Cheney has been on the broadcast 16 times, including this past Sunday\u2019s program. By far, though, the No. 1 guest of Bob\u2019s tenure as host of Face the Nation is none other than Senator John McCain who has been on the program 76 times.\u000aHendin did mention two categories of guests that Schieffer showcased who were outside the world of Beltway politics, \u201csports figures and celebrities,\u201d and mentioned three of these: Bill Cosby, Morgan Fairchild and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. So much for \u201call segments of American life.\u201d Apparently there are some parts of the nation CBS doesn\u2019t want to face.\u000aMessages to Face the Nation may be sent  here  (or via Twitter @FaceTheNation ). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.\u000a \u000aFiled Under: Blog , zHome , zMail Tagged With: CBS\u000aFacebook Likes\u000a
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VMP3 Link\u000aThis week on CounterSpin: It hasn\u2019t been probing media coverage that\u2019s roughened the road for the corporate power grab known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, now stalled in Congress despite Barack Obama\u2019s personal appeals. How is it that a deal that mega-corporations want, and most political elites wouldn\u2019t dream of challenging, hasn\u2019t shot through like a greased pig? We\u2019ll talk about public interest activism \u2014 the missing piece in much top-down media coverage \u2014 with Kevin Zeese of the group Popular Resistance, part of the Stop Fast Track coalition.\u000aAlso on the show: Beltway paper The Hill captured it in a headline, \u201cEPA Gives Republicans New Ammo in Fight Against Fracking Regs.\u201d And to many, that\u2019s just what the agency did with a new study that, to hear media tell it, found that fracking doesn\u2019t pose any widespread harm to drinking water. Is that really what the science said? We\u2019ll hear that story of spin and more spin from Wenonah Hauter of Food and Water Watch.\u000aAnd, as usual, Janine Jackson takes a look back at the week\u2019s press.\u000aLINKS:\u000a
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VPrint\u000aPolitico recently ran a  fantastic historical profile  of journalist Theodore H. White by the writer Scott Porch. White invented the genre of modern presidential campaign books with  The Making of the President, 1960  (and then 1964, 1968 and 1972).\u000aThe 1960 version, which won a Pulitzer Prize and sold four million copies, describes John F. Kennedy as a \u201cforlorn and lonesome young man \u2026 lithe as an athlete \u2026 handsome and tired, with just a fleck of gray now in his glossy brown hair\u201d who \u201cbaffled\u201d the \u201cold-line politicians of Tammany.\u201d Then after Kennedy was assassinated, White helped Jackie Kennedy  create the \u201cCamelot\u201d myth of his presidency.\u000aIn other words, White publicly took the stance that U.S. politicians and politics were just super. This is from the first pages of The Making of the President, 1960:\u000aI owe two general acknowledgments:\u000aFirst, to the politicians of America \u2014 men whom I have found over the long years the pleasantest, shrewdest and generally the most honorable of companions \u2026\u000aSecond, I must thank my comrades of the press \u2014 whose reporting at every level of America politics purifies, protects and refreshes our system from year to year.\u000aBut what did White think about U.S. politics in private? See if you can spot the subtle difference between White\u2019s public statements and this letter he wrote to a close friend on August 31, 1960 during the Kennedy-Nixon campaign:\u000a\u2026 it is all fraudulent, all of it, everywhere, up and down, East and West. The movies, radio and state and books and TV \u2014 all of them are fraudulent; and the foundations and universities and scholars, they are all fraudulent too; and the executives and the financiers \u2026 and the Commissars and the Krushchevs and the Mao Tze-tungs, they are fraudulent equally; it is all a great game; and there are two dangers in this great game: first, the fraudulent people come to believe their own lies, they come to have faith in their fraud; and second, underneath it all, because people are fundamentally good, they come to realize that we live in lies and the people get angrier and angrier and they may explode.\u000aThe scenery of politics is ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous. Yet I must report all this as serious. This is the strain on me. That I must be serious, and I must exhaust myself trying to find out what is true and what is fraud and yet, even after I know, I must take them both seriously and write of them both as if I did not know the true distinctions between them.\u000a(Thanks to Porch, who quotes some of the 1960 letter, for sending me the whole thing.)\u000a(This post is from our blog:  Unofficial Sources .)\u000aPHOTO: Author Theodore H. White poses in his New York City apartment with the book that won him the Pulitzer Prize on May 7, 1962. (AP)\u000aEmail the author: jon.schwarz@theintercept.com\u000a
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VWhite men never get to tell their stories - CounterSpin (@FAIRmediawatch)\u000aShare it if you like it!\u000aAir Date: 1-9-15\u000aHear the clip in context; listen to the full episode:  Boys will be boys but we can change what that means (Patriarchy) \u000aSubscribe to the original show this clip is from:  Counterspin\u000aDo you like this segment?\u000aBe the first to comment\u000aOptional email code\u000a
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VBy Josmar Trujillo\u000aThe New York Post, the notorious right-wing tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch, inspired a media stampede of stories highlighting increases in New York City\u2019s crime statistics. The hysterical headline \u201cYou\u2019re 45% More Likely to Be Murdered in de Blasio\u2019s Manhattan\u201d ( 5/26/15 ) served as a springboard for other local media outlets to question if the city was suddenly a crime-ridden hellhole under Mayor Bill de Blasio\u2013presented by the Post as a liberal on policing.\u000aThe Post\u2018s story reported that there had been 16 murders so far this year in Manhattan, one of New York City\u2019s five boroughs, versus 11 during the same time period in 2014 (when, the Post failed to note, de Blasio was also mayor\u2014he took office on January 1, 2014). An increase of 45 percent naturally sounds much more alarming than the flat numerical increase: five more.\u000aThese homicide figures are actually so low historically in the city that you\u2019d have to go back to the 1960s for comparable numbers. For a city that once had upwards of 1,000 and sometime 2,000 murders a year , a time from the 1970s into the \u201990s often referred to as \u201cthe bad old days,\u201d 16 in Manhattan in five months is remarkably low.\u000aIf instead of comparing de Blasio\u2019s second year in office to his first year, the Post had compared the rate of killing so far this year to the 102 Manhattan homicides (not counting 9/11) in 2001\u2013the last full year of the mayoralty of Rudy Giuliani, celebrated by the Post for his crime-fighting triumphs\u2013the headline would have had to read, \u201cYou\u2019re 63% Less Likely to Be Murdered in de Blasio\u2019s Manhattan Than in Giuliani\u2019s\u201d\u2013but that\u2019s a framing that you\u2019re never going to see in the New York Post.\u000aInstead, the short but effective story, quoting unnamed police sources (of course) clamoring for more cops and more \u201c stop & frisks \u201c\u2013arbitrary police searches, mainly of young men of color\u2013was followed a few days later by a front-page story ( 5/31/15 ). The cover featured a shooting victim\u2019s uncle with the caption \u201cBring Back Stop & Frisk,\u201d rehashing a debate over a policing tactic found to be mostly unconstitutional by a federal judge in 2013. The decrease in the documented use of stop & frisk, which began to be dramatically scaled back in the last year of then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is now attributed by the Post to de Blasio and blamed for the supposed spike in crime.\u000aThe Daily News, smelling blood in the water, jumped on the opportunity to flesh out the developing mayor-soft-on-crime theme with a story  ( 6/5/15 ) reporting an increase in subway assaults. Citing some of the mayor\u2019s supposedly crime-inducing police \u201creforms,\u201d like \u201cthe decriminalization of low-level marijuana possession\u201d (which was actually decriminalized in 1977), the story piled onto de Blasio\u2013who, like other Democrats, is actually much more a supporter than reformer of police. (\u201cWhen police give instruction, you follow the instruction,\u201d he remarked in response to complaints about cops\u2019 brutal response to protests against police violence\u2013New York Observer, 4/30/15 .)\u000aGallup\u2019s polling shows that perceptions of crime have little to do with the actual crime rate.\u000aOf course, the media-driven conversation on policing and public safety begins with the simplistic premise that the amount and aggressiveness of policing solely determines the crime rate. A Wall Street Journal story in May demonstrated that the only proof reporters need to confirm the notion that de Blasio is dangerously soft on crime are opinion polls showing New Yorkers are worried about crime (FAIR Blog, 5/15/15 ). But opinion polling shows that public perceptions of crime have little to do with actual crime rates, as a majority of respondents nearly always tell  Gallup that crime is rising, even as crime rates have fallen dramatically over the past 20 years. Commenting on this phenomenon, Lauren-Brooke Eisen and Oliver Roeder of the Brennan Center (Huffington Post, 3/16/15 ) suggest that \u201csensationalist coverage of isolated crimes has contributed to the public misperception that crime is increasing.\u201d\u000aThe media\u2019s never-ending push for ever-lower crime stats, continually raising expectations, is likely politically driven. Somehow exempt from the criticism of de Blasio\u2019s supposed soft-on-crime sins is NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton, the man actually in charge of policing in New York City\u2014a favorite of conservatives who is regarded as an international champion of aggressive policing.\u000aIn a fawning column in the Post ( 6/6/15 ), Michael Goodwin heaps praise on Bratton and complains that de Blasio (described as some sort of flaming communist) won\u2019t \u201clet Bratton be Bratton\u201d\u2014finally declaring, \u201cIt\u2019s time to turn Bill Bratton loose.\u201d This Frankenstein-like description of Bratton is perhaps appropriate, but suggests spikes in crime simply require more unchecked policing in urban neighborhoods.\u000aThe Washington Post\u2018s Fix blog plotted New York City\u2019s plummeting use of \u201cstop & frisk\u201d against its steadily declining crime rate.\u000aAgain, the underlying truth that media take for granted is that more police = less crime. But is that true? As even Bratton himself has been forced to admit , all sorts of serious crime was much higher when stop & frisk was at its peak in 2011 (at nearly 700,000 stops) than this year (which probably won\u2019t crack 50,000 recorded stops). The tactic\u2019s correlation with crime would suggest, if anything, an inverse relationship\u2014the opposite of what the front page of the Post would have its readers believe.\u000aThe same is true for the number of uniformed police officers. As the size of the NYPD has dropped from an all-time high of about 41,000 cops in 2001 to just under 35,000 today, crime has also dropped\u2014dramatically. Again, if the popular notion is that more cops make us safer, then the reality, it seems, is counterintuitive.\u000aBernard Harcourt, who wrote influential books and authored studies debunking the famous Broken Windows theory of policing (the debated idea that focusing on low-level \u201curban disorder\u201d will curtail serious crime), recently pointed out (Guardian, 6/6/15 ) that the \u201ccrime wave\u201d politics being carried by right-wing and corporate centrist media outlets are a classic response to a political movement that takes on racist policing in America:\u000aThe point of the \u201cFerguson effect,\u201d though, is not to be accurate. It is instead to distract us from the growing evidence about the magnitude and extent of police use of lethal violence in the United States\u2014as powerfully documented just this week by the Guardian and the Washington Post \u2014and to besmirch the #BlackLivesMatter movement.\u000aIt\u2019s a strategy that Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater inaugurated in his campaign in 1964, almost single-handedly turning crime into a political weapon against the civil rights movement.\u000aHarcourt was debunking a Wall Street Journal op-ed ( 5/29/15 ) by Heather MacDonald, a senior fellow at the right-wing Manhattan Institute, which has promoted Broken Windows policing for years. MacDonald had made the claim that the \u201ccrime wave\u201d is a national trend made possible by protests.\u000aIf that sounds familiar, it\u2019s because it\u2019s essentially the same logic New York City police union boss Pat Lynch used to pin the shootings of two NYPD officers last December on both demonstrators and Mayor de Blasio (Huffington Post, 12/21/14 ). As law-and-order pundits often do, MacDonald argues that the \u201cFerguson Effect\u201d isn\u2019t only leading to more crime, but that the urban poor will pay the bloody price if the police aren\u2019t allowed to continue their usual shenanigans.\u000aWhile Bratton and de Blasio may be forced to rebuff some of the media\u2019s hysteria, they both stand behind the Broken Windows theory that was popularized in the \u201990s under New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and a younger Bratton. The theory, a target of protesters from Ferguson to New York, is a fundamental cornerstone of policing in America. Its success is self-evident, as politicians and media pundits tell it.\u000aBut as Harcourt and others have pointed out, its supposed causal relationship with diminishing crime simply isn\u2019t supported by research. Other social factors (economic shifts, the end of the crack era, etc.) that seem to explain an international phenomenon of declining crime that began in the \u201990s, and occurred in cities whether or not they subscribed to the Broken Windows theory, are seldom mentioned when media tackles the issue of crime.\u000aThat more complicated picture, of course, will likely never make for a good front page.\u000aJosmar Trujillo is a former columnist for Extra!.\u000aRelated\u000a
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Vhttps://twitter.com/allahpundit/status/614073851316547584
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VDon't have an account? Sign up »\u000aClose\u000aSign up for Twitter\u000aNot on Twitter? Sign up, tune into the things you care about, and get updates as they happen.\u000aHave an account? Log in »\u000aClose\u000aTwo-way (sending and receiving) short codes:\u000aCountry\u000a
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VHome Faculty Lounge Rachel Dolezal Let Go at Eastern Washington University\u000aRachel Dolezal Let Go at Eastern Washington University\u000aJune 25, 2015\u000a,  Spencer Irvine, Leave a comment\u000aThe controversial adjunct professor and former head of the Spokane, Washington NAACP chapter will not be retained, in all likelihood. But, her past is more head-scratching than her recent comments on her being African-American.\u000aBook Review\u000aHave We Lost the Cultural War?\u000aPaul Kengor\u2019s new book, Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage, provides a detailed explanation of why, according to a new Gallup poll, \u201cAmericans are more likely now than\u2026\u000a, Spencer Irvine , No Comment\u000aComing to a university near you\u000aBefore you find him on offer as a university speaker or course, you may want to read the meticulously documented story of Cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal by former Accuracy in Academia executive director Dan Flynn.\u000a© Accuracy In Academia\u000aReceive our FREE email newsletter!\u000aReceive updates on our efforts to fight bias in academia, as well as the most recent publications from the Accuracy in Academia web site.\u000aSubscribe Now!\u000a
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VHome » Blog - On Target » Hillary Clinton Exempted Aide from Disclosure List at State Dept\u000aHillary Clinton Exempted Aide from Disclosure List at State Dept\u000aSpencer Irvine  \u2014   June 25, 2015\u000a \u000aFormer AIM intern Alana Goodman with the story:\u000a\u201cThe State Department did not disclose that Hillary Clinton\u2019s chief of staff Cheryl Mills had a special arrangement in 2009 that allowed her to hold outside positions with the William J. Clinton Foundation, New York University, and an Abu Dhabi-funded group.\u201d\u000a\u201cThe agency came under scrutiny in 2013, after it was reported that Clinton\u2019s close aide Huma Abedin had been granted \u201cspecial government employee\u201d status under Clinton, which allowed her to work as a part-time consultant for the State Department while also taking private clients that had financial ties to the former First Family.\u201d\u000aShare This\u000aAbout the author\u000aSpencer Irvine\u000aSpencer Irvine graduated from Brigham Young University in International Relations and currently works for AIM running operations and social media.\u000aRelated Posts\u000a
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VHome » Blog - On Target » Supreme Court Upholds ObamaCare, Again, in King v. Burwell\u000aSupreme Court Upholds ObamaCare, Again, in King v. Burwell\u000aSpencer Irvine  \u2014   June 25, 2015\u000a \u000a \u000aYup, by a 6-3 vote and the majority written by Chief Justice Roberts, ObamaCare\u2019s illegal subsidies are ruled legal.\u000aShare This\u000aAbout the author\u000aSpencer Irvine\u000aSpencer Irvine graduated from Brigham Young University in International Relations and currently works for AIM running operations and social media.\u000aRelated Posts\u000a
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VDon't have an account? Sign up »\u000aClose\u000aSign up for Twitter\u000aNot on Twitter? Sign up, tune into the things you care about, and get updates as they happen.\u000aHave an account? Log in »\u000aClose\u000aTwo-way (sending and receiving) short codes:\u000aCountry\u000a
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VHome » Blog - On Target » UN\u2019s Report on Gaza Unfairly Criticizes Israel, says Retired US General\u000aUN\u2019s Report on Gaza Unfairly Criticizes Israel, says Retired US General\u000aSpencer Irvine  \u2014   June 23, 2015\u000aThe Free Beacon reported:\u000a\u201cU.S. Gen. Charles Wald, the leader of a task force of retired senior U.S. military officers who studied and reported on the 2014 Gaza War, issued a statement Monday denouncing the U.N. Human Rights Council\u2019s report on that conflict.\u201d\u000a\u201cHe claims that the report is unbalanced and uneducated, referring to other, similar reports, which have been shown to be faulty in the past.\u201d\u000aShare This\u000aAbout the author\u000aSpencer Irvine\u000aSpencer Irvine graduated from Brigham Young University in International Relations and currently works for AIM running operations and social media.\u000aRelated Posts\u000aBecause patriotism and ObamaCare go hand-in-hand, according to Obama and his administration.\u000aVictor Redlick\u000aThe UN is the world\u2019s most inhumane and odious sewage mistreatment\u000aplant. The criminally-laced world body has no release point of effusion;\u000aso, no matter which toxic anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, anti-Zionist\u000aparticipants are the pervasive members in disgusting and immoral\u000astanding, they have no alternative but to eternally fester in the\u000aequally egregious Security Council and, furthermore, metastasize within\u000athe wallowing and hateful filth of the hardly august General Assembly,\u000aat large.\u000aLike a carcinogenic epidemic this most irreverent\u000aorganization must be summarily eradicated for everyone\u2019s greater good.\u000aTo have western nations and righteous democracies, anywhere, continue to\u000asupport this globally rampant \u2013 one hundred and ninety-three member in\u000aall \u2013 disease only encourages the cancerous slime within it to\u000aperpetuate and cause more irretrievable damage.\u000aIt is time to\u000acut the UN\u2019s long overdue, umbilical lifeline off, once and for all. Now\u000ais as good a time to asphyxiate these incorrigible reprobates and\u000agenealogically-challenged missing links, who comprise the seventy year\u000aold disgraceful entity, as any. Funding this cadre of human\u000ainvertebrates is the greatest human injustice, and a sin of immense\u000aproportion.\u000aFrom Secretary-General cum Austrian Nazi\u000acollaborator, Kurt Waldheim, right on through to today\u2019s ineptness of\u000aSouth Korea\u2019s Ban Ki-moon and all other pathetic leaders in between \u2013\u000asave and except for first Norway\u2019s Trygve Lie and then Sweden\u2019s Dag\u000aHammerskjold \u2013 the United (discrimi)Nations has been both an\u000aincalculable and unfathomable money pit and an unconscionable enabler of\u000acrimes against humanity.\u000aIf the outrageous UN continues to\u000abreathe, the most vulnerable world, at large, can only count on more of\u000athe same socio-political debauchery, and, in so doing, further escalate\u000aits notorious members\u2019 racist opprobrium, towards the only nation on\u000athis earth seen fit to be listed as a Human Rights violator; little old \u2013 that\u2019s very\u000abiblically old \u2013 but (mightiest) Israel. Not North Korea; not Russia, not China, not failed Muslim countries, not select African or Central and South American dictatorships. Oh no. Just ISRAEL! Stupidity is boundless.\u000aGet our free daily email!\u000aEmail Address :\u000a
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VHome » Blog - On Target » Supreme Court Upholds ObamaCare, Again, in King v. Burwell\u000aSupreme Court Upholds ObamaCare, Again, in King v. Burwell\u000aSpencer Irvine  \u2014   June 25, 2015\u000a \u000a \u000aYup, by a 6-3 vote and the majority written by Chief Justice Roberts, ObamaCare\u2019s illegal subsidies are ruled legal.\u000aShare This\u000aAbout the author\u000aSpencer Irvine\u000aSpencer Irvine graduated from Brigham Young University in International Relations and currently works for AIM running operations and social media.\u000aRelated Posts\u000a
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VHome » Blog - On Target » Hillary Clinton Brooklyn HQ Rent is $25,000 a Month, Paid for by \u201cFrugal\u201d Clinton Campaign\u000aHillary Clinton Brooklyn HQ Rent is $25,000 a Month, Paid for by \u201cFrugal\u201d Clinton Campaign\u000aSpencer Irvine  \u2014   June 24, 2015\u000a \u000a \u000aSo she\u2019s really a woman of the common and \u201ceveryday American\u201d person with a rent bill like that?!\u000aShare This\u000aAbout the author\u000aSpencer Irvine\u000aSpencer Irvine graduated from Brigham Young University in International Relations and currently works for AIM running operations and social media.\u000aRelated Posts\u000a
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VHome Faculty Lounge Campbell Brown Launches Education-Focused Website\u000aCampbell Brown Launches Education-Focused Website\u000aJune 24, 2015\u000aAs the Free Beacon reported:\u000a\u201cCampbell Brown continues to fight to ensure that American kids get the \u201ceducation they deserve.\u201d\u201d\u000a\u201cBrown, a former CNN host, announced the launch of a non-profit education news site on Tuesday that will operate \u201cto challenge the status quo, expose corruption and inequality, and champion the heroes who bring positive change to our schools.\u201d\u201d\u000a\u201c The Seventy Four , named after the 74 million children under the age of 18 in the United States, will launch in mid-July and will aim to give a voice to those underserved by the current system.\u201d\u000a
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VHome » Blog - On Target » Dear Obama: Jonathan Gruber DID have a Big Role in ObamaCare\u000aDear Obama: Jonathan Gruber DID have a Big Role in ObamaCare\u000aSpencer Irvine  \u2014   June 24, 2015\u000aThe Washington Examiner said it best:\u000a\u201cShortly after last fall\u2019s election, tapes surfaced of MIT economist Jonathan Gruber smugly describing how deception, \u201clack of transparency\u201d and \u201cthe stupidity of the American voter\u201d had been \u201ccritical\u201d in allowing Democrats who controlled Congress to ram Obamacare through in 2010.\u201d\u000a\u201cThis was important because the law Gruber helped write restructured nearly a fifth of the national economy and upended many people\u2019s healthcare arrangements. The Obama administration paid him some $400,000 for his efforts, and he also managed to snag millions more dollars for consulting gigs with various state Obamacare exchanges.\u201d\u000a\u201cWhen Gruber\u2019s comments surfaced, no one ran away from him as quickly as President Obama, who dismissed him as \u201csome adviser who never worked on our staff.\u201d The president and his officials pretended that Gruber had been a bit player in the passage of the law.\u201d\u000a\u201cIt turns out, however, that this was as wildly inaccurate as Obama\u2019s promise that his reforms would allow people to keep their health plans if they wanted to.\u201d\u000aShare This\u000aAbout the author\u000aSpencer Irvine\u000aSpencer Irvine graduated from Brigham Young University in International Relations and currently works for AIM running operations and social media.\u000aRelated Posts\u000a
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VHome » Blog - On Target » Obama\u2019s EPA Chief says Climate Change Deniers are Not Normal\u000aObama\u2019s EPA Chief says Climate Change Deniers are Not Normal\u000aSpencer Irvine  \u2014   June 24, 2015\u000a \u000a \u000aThis is a new low for the Obama administration , but name-calling isn\u2019t new to them:\u000a\u201cThe head of the Environmental Protection Agency appeared to hurl barbs at Congress on Tuesday, referring to an unnamed group of climate change \u201cdeniers\u201d who aren\u2019t \u201cnormal\u201d and who won\u2019t \u201ccarry the day\u201d in a democracy.\u201d\u000a\u201cEPA Administrator Gina McCarthy made the comments while addressing a climate change summit at the White House Tuesday to frame the effects of global warming on public health.\u201d\u000aShare This\u000aAbout the author\u000aSpencer Irvine\u000aSpencer Irvine graduated from Brigham Young University in International Relations and currently works for AIM running operations and social media.\u000aRelated Posts\u000a
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sVhttps://twitter.com/scotusblog/status/614073268337819648
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VDon't have an account? Sign up »\u000aClose\u000aSign up for Twitter\u000aNot on Twitter? Sign up, tune into the things you care about, and get updates as they happen.\u000aHave an account? Log in »\u000aClose\u000aTwo-way (sending and receiving) short codes:\u000aCountry\u000a
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VHome Perspectives America\u2019s New Great Society: Rich Kids vs. Poor Kids\u000aAmerica\u2019s New Great Society: Rich Kids vs. Poor Kids\u000aJune 24, 2015\u000a,  Spencer Irvine, 1 Comment\u000aRobert Putnam, a professor of public policy at Harvard\u2019s Kennedy School and a noted social science author, spoke about the growing opportunity gap in America at the American Enterprise Institute this past week.\u000aPutnam pointed out how \u201cover the last thirty to forty years, there\u2019s a gap between rich kids and poor kids.\u201d He defined rich kids as the children of college-educated parents and poor kids as those whose parents graduated from high school. This \u201cgrowing gap\u201d means \u201cthings are getting worse faster for poor kids\u201d in America. Putnam called this the \u201cgrowing opportunity gap\u201d which is illustrated in several ways, one of which is how much money parents invest in their kids\u2019 activities such as summer camps and piano lessons. Putnam named this the \u201csummer camp gap.\u201d\u000aFor rich kids, Putnam said parents spend \u201cnearly $7,000 per kid per year\u201d while poor kids \u201chave had no increase in that kind of indicator of summer camp.\u201d The cost hovers around \u201c$700 per child per year.\u201d\u000aAnother discouraging trend is personal interaction, quality time or what Putnam called \u201cgood night moon time,\u201d between parent and child. \u201cIt used to be there wasn\u2019t any class gap\u201d in this category, but now, rich kids have around 45 minutes a day more than poor kids in quality time with parents. He noted, \u201cDirect interaction with kids is [a] very powerful [influence] on their brain development,\u201d adding that research backs up that point.\u000aPutnam said the class gap not only extends to testing, but also to high school sports such as football. These extracurricular activities are \u201cdropping sharply among kids that come from high school graduate homes,\u201d although \u201cwe know, as a matter of fact, taking part in all those extracurricular activities matters for kids.\u201d Extracurricular activities give kids added social skills, or what Putnam called \u201csoft skills.\u201d He said, \u201cEmployers will pay more\u2026will pay people who [have] more extracurricular activities more because they have soft skills.\u201d Why is there a class gap in extracurricular activities and sports? \u201cThe short answer,\u201d Putnam said, \u201cis pay to play.\u201d\u000aIn the past, \u201call kids in American high school[s]\u201d used to participate in sports for free and gain those \u201csoft skills,\u201d but that changed \u201cabout twenty years ago\u201d when \u201cwe\u2019ve started to charge for [those activities].\u201d Putnam explained that these days it costs about $400 per student to participate in one activity per semester. Poor kids\u2019 parents cannot afford that today, he said. Also, he believed that by \u201cprivatizing\u201d these extracurricular activities, \u201cwe\u2019ve taken \u2013[it] out the hands of poor kids.\u201d\u000aReligious community involvement among America\u2019s youth worried Putnam because he said it was \u201ca very important example of community involvement.\u201d He said, \u201cMy argument is that religious communities used to be a rich source\u201d for children. But today, \u201cthey\u2019re less likely to encounter youth group leaders\u201d who can mentor them.\u000a
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VHome » Blog - On Target » Supreme Court Upholds ObamaCare, Again, in King v. Burwell\u000aSupreme Court Upholds ObamaCare, Again, in King v. Burwell\u000aSpencer Irvine  \u2014   June 25, 2015\u000a \u000a \u000aYup, by a 6-3 vote and the majority written by Chief Justice Roberts, ObamaCare\u2019s illegal subsidies are ruled legal.\u000aShare This\u000aAbout the author\u000aSpencer Irvine\u000aSpencer Irvine graduated from Brigham Young University in International Relations and currently works for AIM running operations and social media.\u000aRelated Posts\u000a
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VHome » Blog - On Target » WATCH: Democrat Strategist says Clinton Fundraiser for $2,700 a Couple is Cheap\u000aWATCH: Democrat Strategist says Clinton Fundraiser for $2,700 a Couple is Cheap\u000aSpencer Irvine  \u2014   June 24, 2015\u000a \u000a \u000aWait, what?! More of the D.C. bubble at work because that\u2019s a lot of money to pay for a Hillary Clinton fundraiser .\u000aShare This\u000aAbout the author\u000aSpencer Irvine\u000aSpencer Irvine graduated from Brigham Young University in International Relations and currently works for AIM running operations and social media.\u000aRelated Posts\u000a
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VHome » Blog - On Target » Supreme Court Upholds ObamaCare, Again, in King v. Burwell\u000aSupreme Court Upholds ObamaCare, Again, in King v. Burwell\u000aSpencer Irvine  \u2014   June 25, 2015\u000a \u000a \u000aYup, by a 6-3 vote and the majority written by Chief Justice Roberts, ObamaCare\u2019s illegal subsidies are ruled legal.\u000aShare This\u000aAbout the author\u000aSpencer Irvine\u000aSpencer Irvine graduated from Brigham Young University in International Relations and currently works for AIM running operations and social media.\u000aRelated Posts\u000a
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VHome » Blog - On Target » WATCH: State Dept Admits It\u2019s Combing Through E-mails to See Which Ones Hillary Didn\u2019t Provide\u000aWATCH: State Dept Admits It\u2019s Combing Through E-mails to See Which Ones Hillary Didn\u2019t Provide\u000aSpencer Irvine  \u2014   June 24, 2015\u000a \u000a \u000aSo Hillary isn\u2019t completely transparent, contrary to what some liberals and media outlets are saying? We\u2019re not surprised that there are missing e-mails .\u000aShare This\u000aAbout the author\u000aSpencer Irvine\u000aSpencer Irvine graduated from Brigham Young University in International Relations and currently works for AIM running operations and social media.\u000aRelated Posts\u000a
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VHome » Blog - On Target » IRS shelled out $18.8 Million to Contractors who didn\u2019t pay Back Taxes\u000aIRS shelled out $18.8 Million to Contractors who didn\u2019t pay Back Taxes\u000aSpencer Irvine  \u2014   June 25, 2015\u000aWay to protect American taxpayer dollars , IRS.\u000a\u201cThe IRS granted 57 contracts worth $18.8 million to corporations with unpaid back taxes from 2012 to 2013, according to a March 26 Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) report.\u201d\u000aShare This\u000aAbout the author\u000aSpencer Irvine\u000aSpencer Irvine graduated from Brigham Young University in International Relations and currently works for AIM running operations and social media.\u000aRelated Posts\u000a
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VHome » Blog - On Target » Bobby Jindal Declares 2016 GOP Bid\u000aBobby Jindal Declares 2016 GOP Bid\u000aSpencer Irvine  \u2014   June 25, 2015\u000a \u000a \u000aThe governor of Louisiana , an Indian-American, said he\u2019s \u201crunning for president to do something\u201d and not to just grab headlines.\u000aShare This\u000aAbout the author\u000aSpencer Irvine\u000aSpencer Irvine graduated from Brigham Young University in International Relations and currently works for AIM running operations and social media.\u000aRelated Posts\u000a
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VHome » Blog - On Target » Texas Abortion Clinics to Close\u000aTexas Abortion Clinics to Close\u000aSpencer Irvine  \u2014   June 24, 2015\u000aAs the Washington Examiner  reported:\u000a\u201cTexas will have fewer than 10 abortion clinics in a week if the Supreme Court doesn\u2019t intervene.\u201d\u000a\u201cIt\u2019s been two years since Texas passed a hotly contested law placing new requirements on abortion clinics and doctors. But after being temporarily blocked by courts, it is finally set to go into effect July 1. Of about 20 clinics remaining in the state, more than half will be shuttered, opponents of the law say.\u201d\u000a\u201cThat\u2019s unless the Supreme Court steps in to halt the law, which says abortion clinics must meet the standards of ambulatory surgical centers and doctors must have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital.\u201d\u000aShare This\u000aAbout the author\u000aSpencer Irvine\u000aSpencer Irvine graduated from Brigham Young University in International Relations and currently works for AIM running operations and social media.\u000aRelated Posts\u000a
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VHome » Blog - On Target » Supreme Court Upholds ObamaCare, Again, in King v. Burwell\u000aSupreme Court Upholds ObamaCare, Again, in King v. Burwell\u000aSpencer Irvine  \u2014   June 25, 2015\u000a \u000a \u000aYup, by a 6-3 vote and the majority written by Chief Justice Roberts, ObamaCare\u2019s illegal subsidies are ruled legal.\u000aShare This\u000aAbout the author\u000aSpencer Irvine\u000aSpencer Irvine graduated from Brigham Young University in International Relations and currently works for AIM running operations and social media.\u000aRelated Posts\u000a
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VHome » Blog - On Target » Study finds less than 5% of Colleges Protect 1st Amendment Rights\u000aStudy finds less than 5% of Colleges Protect 1st Amendment Rights\u000aSpencer Irvine  \u2014   June 25, 2015\u000a \u000a \u000aThis isn\u2019t shocking news as colleges like to impose speech codes and free speech zones on their campuses:\u000a\u201cA new study says that less than 5 percent of colleges and universities surveyed have policies in place that respect the First Amendment right to free speech, while more than half are violating either the First Amendment or free speech promises made by these schools.\u201d\u000a\u201cThe Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is an educational nonprofit that reviews 437 college and university speech codes every year in an effort to \u201cdefend the individual rights of students and faculty members at colleges across the country,\u201d said Azhar Majeed, director of FIRE\u2019s Individual Rights Education Program.\u201d\u000aShare This\u000aAbout the author\u000aSpencer Irvine\u000aSpencer Irvine graduated from Brigham Young University in International Relations and currently works for AIM running operations and social media.\u000aRelated Posts\u000aHe said that her acts led to the deaths of two people (which he failed to mention were the aggressors/terrorists/inspired by Islamic State) and that's why he can't stand free speech.\u000aGet our free daily email!\u000aEmail Address :\u000a
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VHome » Blog - On Target » U.S. will Bolster NATO with Equipment & Weapons\u000aU.S. will Bolster NATO with Equipment & Weapons\u000aSpencer Irvine  \u2014   June 23, 2015\u000a \u000a \u000aThis could lead to a second arms race between the West and Russia, as Russia previously announced they will add 40 ICBM\u2019s to their arsenal.\u000aShare This\u000aAbout the author\u000aSpencer Irvine\u000aSpencer Irvine graduated from Brigham Young University in International Relations and currently works for AIM running operations and social media.\u000aRelated Posts\u000a
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VHome » Blog - On Target » Conflict of Interest? Clinton Aide Worked for State Dept AND Middle Eastern Country at the Same Time\u000aConflict of Interest? Clinton Aide Worked for State Dept AND Middle Eastern Country at the Same Time\u000aSpencer Irvine  \u2014   June 24, 2015\u000a \u000a \u000aUh, this would be front-page news of liberal news media outlets if this aide were a Republican. But because she\u2019s Cheryl Mills , an aide of Hillary Clinton, it\u2019s not a big deal (apparently).\u000aShare This\u000aAbout the author\u000aSpencer Irvine\u000aSpencer Irvine graduated from Brigham Young University in International Relations and currently works for AIM running operations and social media.\u000aRelated Posts\u000a
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sVhttps://twitter.com/ellencarmichael/status/614073735671345152
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VDon't have an account? Sign up »\u000aClose\u000aSign up for Twitter\u000aNot on Twitter? Sign up, tune into the things you care about, and get updates as they happen.\u000aHave an account? Log in »\u000aClose\u000aTwo-way (sending and receiving) short codes:\u000aCountry\u000a
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sVhttps://twitter.com/kristinaribali/status/614074572980137984
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VDon't have an account? Sign up »\u000aClose\u000aSign up for Twitter\u000aNot on Twitter? Sign up, tune into the things you care about, and get updates as they happen.\u000aHave an account? Log in »\u000aClose\u000aTwo-way (sending and receiving) short codes:\u000aCountry\u000a
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VHome » Blog - On Target » IRS Destroyed Backups of E-mails that Included Lois Lerner\u2019s E-mails\u000aIRS Destroyed Backups of E-mails that Included Lois Lerner\u2019s E-mails\u000aSpencer Irvine  \u2014   June 25, 2015\u000a \u000a \u000aIt seems very sketchy that the backup tapes were destroyed, with up to 24,000 of Lerner\u2019s e-mails being destroyed while the IRS was investigated for targeting conservative groups.\u000aShare This\u000aAbout the author\u000aSpencer Irvine\u000aSpencer Irvine graduated from Brigham Young University in International Relations and currently works for AIM running operations and social media.\u000aRelated Posts\u000a
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VHome Faculty Lounge Oregon School District teaches $100,000 a year course on White Privilege\u000aOregon School District teaches $100,000 a year course on White Privilege\u000aJune 24, 2015\u000aBook Review\u000aHave We Lost the Cultural War?\u000aPaul Kengor\u2019s new book, Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage, provides a detailed explanation of why, according to a new Gallup poll, \u201cAmericans are more likely now than\u2026\u000a, Spencer Irvine , No Comment\u000aComing to a university near you\u000aBefore you find him on offer as a university speaker or course, you may want to read the meticulously documented story of Cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal by former Accuracy in Academia executive director Dan Flynn.\u000a© Accuracy In Academia\u000aReceive our FREE email newsletter!\u000aReceive updates on our efforts to fight bias in academia, as well as the most recent publications from the Accuracy in Academia web site.\u000aSubscribe Now!\u000a
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VHome » Blog - On Target » Text of King v. Burwell decision on ObamaCare Subsidies\u000aText of King v. Burwell decision on ObamaCare Subsidies\u000aSpencer Irvine  \u2014   June 25, 2015\u000aHere\u2019s the text of the Supreme Court decision in the case King v. Burwell.\u000aShare This\u000aAbout the author\u000aSpencer Irvine\u000aSpencer Irvine graduated from Brigham Young University in International Relations and currently works for AIM running operations and social media.\u000aRelated Posts\u000a
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VConfederate Flags in a pattern on a dark blue background. Polyester\u000aBrowse Similar Items\u000a
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VHome » Blog - On Target » Muslim Brotherhood Calls for Overthrow of Egyptian Gov\u2019t\u000aMuslim Brotherhood Calls for Overthrow of Egyptian Gov\u2019t\u000aSpencer Irvine  \u2014   June 24, 2015\u000a \u000a \u000aThe ousted political party/terrorist group calls for the overthrow of the military-backed government. Back to their normal operations pre-Arab Spring, it seems.\u000aShare This\u000aAbout the author\u000aSpencer Irvine\u000aSpencer Irvine graduated from Brigham Young University in International Relations and currently works for AIM running operations and social media.\u000aRelated Posts\u000a
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VHome » Blog - On Target » Hillary Clinton Brooklyn HQ Rent is $25,000 a Month, Paid for by \u201cFrugal\u201d Clinton Campaign\u000aHillary Clinton Brooklyn HQ Rent is $25,000 a Month, Paid for by \u201cFrugal\u201d Clinton Campaign\u000aSpencer Irvine  \u2014   June 24, 2015\u000a \u000a \u000aSo she\u2019s really a woman of the common and \u201ceveryday American\u201d person with a rent bill like that?!\u000aShare This\u000aAbout the author\u000aSpencer Irvine\u000aSpencer Irvine graduated from Brigham Young University in International Relations and currently works for AIM running operations and social media.\u000aRelated Posts\u000a
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VHome Faculty Lounge White House Poet taught College Class that had Students Sit in Circles, Watch Pornography\u000aWhite House Poet taught College Class that had Students Sit in Circles, Watch Pornography\u000aJune 24, 2015\u000a,  Spencer Irvine, Leave a comment\u000aThis sounds like a bad idea for a college class at the University of Pennsylvania.\u000aBook Review\u000aHave We Lost the Cultural War?\u000aPaul Kengor\u2019s new book, Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage, provides a detailed explanation of why, according to a new Gallup poll, \u201cAmericans are more likely now than\u2026\u000a, Spencer Irvine , No Comment\u000aComing to a university near you\u000aBefore you find him on offer as a university speaker or course, you may want to read the meticulously documented story of Cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal by former Accuracy in Academia executive director Dan Flynn.\u000a© Accuracy In Academia\u000aReceive our FREE email newsletter!\u000aReceive updates on our efforts to fight bias in academia, as well as the most recent publications from the Accuracy in Academia web site.\u000aSubscribe Now!\u000a
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VHome » Blog - On Target » Hillary Clinton Silent as Refugee Crisis Explodes\u000aHillary Clinton Silent as Refugee Crisis Explodes\u000aSpencer Irvine  \u2014   June 24, 2015\u000aAs the Free Beacon noted:\u000a\u201cHillary Clinton\u2019s policies as secretary of state failed to address several crises that have produced a record number of displaced persons worldwide, according to a Republican group that also noted her lack of a commemoration for World Refugee Day.\u201d\u000a\u201cThe United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a report last week that there were 59.5 million people who were forcibly displaced at the end of 2014, the largest number ever recorded. More than half of the displaced persons were children. Refugee levels spiked in the Middle East, Europe, and sub-Saharan Africa, all regions where Clinton\u2019s policies faced criticism during her tenure as secretary of state.\u201d\u000aShare This\u000aAbout the author\u000aSpencer Irvine\u000aSpencer Irvine graduated from Brigham Young University in International Relations and currently works for AIM running operations and social media.\u000aRelated Posts\u000a
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sVhttps://twitter.com/jpodhoretz/status/614073381554679808
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VDon't have an account? Sign up »\u000aClose\u000aSign up for Twitter\u000aNot on Twitter? Sign up, tune into the things you care about, and get updates as they happen.\u000aHave an account? Log in »\u000aClose\u000aTwo-way (sending and receiving) short codes:\u000aCountry\u000a
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VJune 22, 2015 By Bre Payton\u000aIn the wake of the Charleston shooting, controversy over the Confederate Flag, which is flying from South Carolina\u2019s capitol grounds, has heated up. Presidential candidates have been peppered with questions asking if they support the removal of the Confederate Flag. Well, presidential candidates who aren\u2019t Hillary Clinton, this is.\u000aMany of the 2016 presidential hopefuls have weighed in the issue, some including Sen. Lindsey Graham, have defended the flag, while Jeb Bush pointed to his removal of the flag from the Florida capitol when he was governor as a sign of his disapproval of it. Other candidates, like Gov. Scott Walker and Mike Huckabee have said it is an issue to be left for the states to decide.\u000aNearly every 2016 contender has been asked about the flag, except for Clinton, and it doesn\u2019t seem like anyone has really bothered to try asking her about it. Granted, the Clinton campaign has been notorious for denying the media access to her, and even denying reporters the privilege of using the restroom in the same zip code as one of her campaign events.\u000aNo matter what Clinton says about the flag, it will be weird, because she has quite an interesting history with the rebel flag.\u000aAs it turns out, her husband, former Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, signed a law which designated a portion of the state flag to commemorate the Confederate States of America. \u201cThe blue star above the word \u201cARKANSAS\u201d is to commemorate the Confederate States of America,\u201d Clinton\u2019s law reads.\u000aSeriously though, has Hillary been asked about the Arkansas flag? pic.twitter.com/8yJ5ExLDzA\u000a\u2014 Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) June 20, 2015\u000aWhile he was president, Bill Clinton apparently didn\u2019t really make an issue of the Confederate Flag from the White House either, according to the Daily Caller:\u000aWhen the Confederate flag issue arose in the 2000 election, Matt Drudge reported that then-President Bill Clinton\u2019s spokesman Joe Lockhart was asked about the issue. Lockhart told reporters, \u201cI\u2019ve just never heard any discussion or any objections that the president has raised.\u201d\u000aYou do you, Hillary. Keep calling for increased gun control,  while staying quiet on the flag controversy, leaving the other to candidates get barraged with media questions about it. Does Hillary repudiate her husband\u2019s reverence for the Confederate flag? Would she have signed that law? Did she approve of it at the time? If not, why didn\u2019t she do anything to stop it? For whatever reason, no reporters covering her campaign are asking her these types of rather obvious questions.\u000aTry, just for a moment, to imagine how the press would react if they discovered campaign paraphernalia for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan that included a rebel flag and the phrase \u201c Dixie Loves Romney \u201c:\u000aTry to imagine if the press discovered Romney-Ryan campaign buttons featuring nothing but their names atop the Dixie flag .\u000aThe media would immediately demand answers. Their questions would never stop. \u201cAre you racist? Why are you racist? What does it feel like to be racist? Is everyone in your party a racist, or just you?\u201d\u000aBut without being forced to answer these and other basic questions that are being exclusively targeted at Republicans, there\u2019s litle-to-no chance Hillary will ever offer an opinion on the controversy. At this point, we can expect nothing less from cloistered candidate who thinks a speech is the same thing as an interview. \u000aBre Payton is a staff writer at The Federalist. Follow her on Twitter .\u000a
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sVhttps://twitter.com/anniebeans59/status/614075429108854784
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VDon't have an account? Sign up »\u000aClose\u000aSign up for Twitter\u000aNot on Twitter? Sign up, tune into the things you care about, and get updates as they happen.\u000aHave an account? Log in »\u000aClose\u000aTwo-way (sending and receiving) short codes:\u000aCountry\u000a
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VHome » Blog - On Target » Bland School Lunches mean Kids are Bringing Salt and Pepper to School\u000aBland School Lunches mean Kids are Bringing Salt and Pepper to School\u000aSpencer Irvine  \u2014   June 25, 2015\u000a \u000aThe healthier school lunches are not popular among America\u2019s children:\u000a\u201cThis \u201ccontraband economy\u201d is result of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act Of 2010, said John Payne, a school board president in Indiana.\u000a\u201cThe 2010 bill directed the U.S. Department of Agriculture to create national standards for food served and sold in schools, which included limits on what could be served and how much, as well as a maximum amount of calories that can be included in school meals.\u201d\u000a\u201cPayne, president of the Blackford County School Board in Hartford City, Ind., told House lawmakers that students in his school district have been \u201ccaught bringing in \u2014 and even selling \u2014 salt, pepper and sugar in school to add taste to perceived bland and tasteless cafeteria food.\u201d\u201d\u000aShare This\u000aAbout the author\u000aSpencer Irvine\u000aSpencer Irvine graduated from Brigham Young University in International Relations and currently works for AIM running operations and social media.\u000aRelated Posts\u000a
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VHome » Blog - On Target » Text of King v. Burwell decision on ObamaCare Subsidies\u000aText of King v. Burwell decision on ObamaCare Subsidies\u000aSpencer Irvine  \u2014   June 25, 2015\u000aHere\u2019s the text of the Supreme Court decision in the case King v. Burwell.\u000aShare This\u000aAbout the author\u000aSpencer Irvine\u000aSpencer Irvine graduated from Brigham Young University in International Relations and currently works for AIM running operations and social media.\u000aRelated Posts\u000a
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VHome » Blog - On Target » VIDEO: Obama\u2019s Defense Secretary says He\u2019s Unsure if Obama will Close Guantanamo Bay\u000aVIDEO: Obama\u2019s Defense Secretary says He\u2019s Unsure if Obama will Close Guantanamo Bay\u000aSpencer Irvine  \u2014   June 24, 2015\u000a \u000a \u000aAnother Obama promise unfulfilled? His secretary of defense says it\u2019s a possibility that Obama will not close Guantanamo Bay by the end of his last term.\u000aShare This\u000aAbout the author\u000aSpencer Irvine\u000aSpencer Irvine graduated from Brigham Young University in International Relations and currently works for AIM running operations and social media.\u000aRelated Posts\u000a
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VHome » AIM Column » Media Largely Ignore News of Latest Obamacare Revelation\u000aMedia Largely Ignore News of Latest Obamacare Revelation\u000aRoger Aronoff  \u2014   June 24, 2015\u000a \u000a \u000aWhen it comes to MIT economist Jonathan Gruber\u2019s Obamacare role, the media are making sure that the joke remains on us. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform recently received 20,000 pages of emails of exchanges between this professor and the White House during \u201cthe crucial months when [Obamacare] was being crafted and passed,\u201d writes Charles Lipson for RealClearPolitics.\u000a\u201cI just heard about this,\u201d President Obama said in 2014. \u201c\u2026The fact that some advisor who never worked on our staff expressed an opinion that I completely disagree with, in terms of the voters, is no reflection on the actual process that was run.\u201d\u000aGruber informed the administration \u201cabout interviews with reporters and discussions with lawmakers\u201d and consulted with the administration \u201cabout how to publicly describe his role,\u201d reported The Wall Street Journal. He received at least $400,000 from the federal government, and millions more from state governments for his brilliant advice.\u000aThe mainstream media, as they do with most negative news regarding Obamacare, met this newest revelation regarding President Obama\u2019s obfuscations and lies with a near complete blackout.\u000aAs we recently reported , members of the media not only cover up President Obama\u2019s many lies, they also defend his signature legislation from any threat from any source. Most recently the press has been pressuring the Supreme Court to vote to save Obamacare\u2019s federal subsidies based on the pervasive myth that the legislative text requiring that subsidies be distributed through an exchange \u201cestablished by the state\u201d results from a Congressional drafting error .\u000aCould the impending Supreme Court ruling have influenced editors\u2019 and television news producers\u2019 decisions to ignore this latest information regarding Gruber\u2019s Obamacare role?\u000a\u201cA search of the New York Times shows zero hits for \u2018Gruber\u2019 this week,\u201d writes Lipson. He continues:\u000aThe Washington Post has one hit, a brief comment by an online opinion columnist. Regional newspapers like the Chicago Tribune: zero.\u2026The network shows\u2014Good Morning America, the Today Show, and CBS This Morning\u2014have eight hours of air time but did not mention it at all. Zilch.\u000aAs for MSNBC\u2019s Morning Joe, panelists took a moment to have a good laugh at America\u2019s expense, as Accuracy in Media Chairman Don Irvine noted :\u000a\u201cI owe my Republican sources an apology because they kept telling me he [Gruber] was hugely involved, and the White House played it down,\u201d said Mark Halperin, co-managing editor of Bloomberg Politics.\u000a\u201cDid the White House lie about that?\u201d asked Joe Scarborough.\u000a\u201cI think they were not fully forthcoming,\u201d replied Halperin. \u201cOr they may have had their recollections impaired.\u201d\u000aIn other words, President Obama lied.\u000a\u201cMorning Joe\u2019s panel of Democratic stalwarts, including Howard Dean, actually laughed out loud,\u201d writes Lipson. \u201cWhen they were asked the same question\u2014did the White House lie?\u2014they kept laughing and said \u2018they were not fully forthcoming.\u2019\u201d\u000a \u000aMaybe if the media didn\u2019t continue to laugh, ignore, or downplay President Obama\u2019s constant lies and instead held him accountable for them, then the President and his administration wouldn\u2019t be able to get away with their transparent disdain for the press, or, apparently, the \u201c stupid \u201d American voter, as Gruber characterized them.\u000aShare This\u000aAbout the author\u000aRoger Aronoff\u000aRoger Aronoff is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and can be contacted at roger.aronoff@aim.org. View the complete archives from Roger Aronoff .\u000adisqus_smWiOrvPtd\u000a\u201cWoe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for\u000alight, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for\u000abitter!\u201d\u000aColorado Conservative\u000aAnd Gruber will be laughing all the way to the bank as the Supreme court made up new law allowing the subsidies to remain intact.\u000astringman\u000aJust like Justice Scalia said, we should start calling it SCOTUScare instead of Obamacare.  They are the sons of B\u2019s that have allowed that monstrosity to pass Constitutional muster, especially that \u2018great scholar\u2019 Chief Justice John (spit) Roberts (Thanks a million, George W. Bush).  May they all go rot.  I am absolutely sick to death with every stinking one of them.\u000astringman\u000aAnd (even more) woe to we that have to put up with their bloody nonsense.\u000aDo I sound angry?\u000a
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VUS, West ready to offer nuclear equipment to Iran if it limits possible atomic weapons programs\u000aPublished June 24, 2015\u000aFacebook 0 Twitter 0 livefyre Email Print\u000aThe United States and its allies are willing to offer Iran state-of-the-art nuclear equipment if Tehran agrees to pare down its atomic weapons program as part of a final nuclear agreement, a draft document has revealed.\u000aThe confidential paper, obtained by the Associated Press, has dozens of bracketed text where disagreements remain. Technical cooperation is the least controversial issue at the talks, and the number of brackets suggest the sides have a ways to go, not only on that topic but also more contentious disputes, with less than a week until the June 30 deadline for a deal.\u000aHowever, the scope of the help now being offered in the draft may displease U.S. congressional critics who already argue that Washington has offered too many concessions at the negotiations.\u000aThe draft, titled "Civil Nuclear Cooperation," promises to supply Iran with light-water nuclear reactors instead of its nearly completed heavy-water facility at Arak, which would produce enough plutonium for several bombs a year if completed as planned.\u000aReducing the Arak reactor's plutonium output was one of the main aims of the U.S. and its negotiating partners, along with paring down Iran's ability to produce enriched uranium -- like plutonium, a potential pathway to nuclear arms.\u000aOutlining plans to modify that heavy-water reactor, the draft, dated June 19, offers to "establish an international partnership" to rebuild it into a less proliferation-prone facility while leaving Iran in "the leadership role as the project owner and manager."\u000aThe eight-page draft also promises "arrangements for the assured supply and removal of nuclear fuel for each reactor provided," and offers help in the "construction and effective operation" of the reactors and related hardware. It also offers to cooperate with Iran in the fields of nuclear safety, nuclear medicine, research, nuclear waste removal and other peaceful applications.\u000aAs well, it firms up earlier tentative agreement on what to do with the underground site of Fordo, saying it will be used for isotope production instead of uranium enrichment.\u000aWashington and its allies had long insisted that the facility be repurposed away from enrichment because Fordo is dug deep into a mountain and thought resistant to airstrikes -- an option neither the U.S. nor Israel has ruled out should talks fail.\u000aBut because isotope production uses the same technology as enrichment and can be quickly re-engineered to enriching uranium, the compromise has been criticized by congressional opponents of the deal.\u000aA diplomat familiar with the negotiations said China was ready to help in re-engineering the heavy water reactor at Arak; France in reprocessing nuclear waste, and Britain in the field of nuclear safety and security.\u000aHe spoke on the eve of Wednesday's new round of nuclear talks in Vienna and demanded anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the confidential talks.\u000aDiplomats say the other appendices include ways of dealing with enrichment; limits on Iran's research and development of advanced uranium-enriching centrifuges and ways of making sure Tehran is keeping its commitment to the deal.\u000aIran has most publicly pushed back on how much leeway the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency would have in monitoring Tehran's nuclear activities. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is rebuffing U.S. demands that the IAEA have access to military sites and nuclear scientists as they keep an eye on Iran's present activities and try to follow up suspicions that the country worked in the past on a nuclear weapon.\u000aBut a senior U.S. official who demanded anonymity in exchange for commenting on the talks said Tuesday that the sides are still apart not only on how transparent Iran must be but all other ancillary issues as well. Separately, White House spokesman Josh Earnest suggested the talks could go past June 30.\u000aIf a deal "requires us to take a couple of extra days ... then we'll do that," he said.\u000aA delay up to July 9 is not a deal-breaker. If Congress receives a deal by then, it has 30 days to review it before President Barack Obama could suspend congressional sanctions.\u000aBut postponement beyond that would double the congressional review period to 60 days, giving both Iranian and U.S. opponents more time to work on undermining an agreement.\u000aEarnest indicated that negotiations may continue even if the sides declare they have reached a final deal, in comments that may further embolden congressional critics who say the talks already have gone on too long.\u000aHe said that even past that point, ongoing "differences of opinion ... may require additional negotiations."\u000aThe Associated Press contributed to this report.\u000aAdvertisement\u000a
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VHome » Blog - On Target » WATCH: State Dept Admits It\u2019s Combing Through E-mails to See Which Ones Hillary Didn\u2019t Provide\u000aWATCH: State Dept Admits It\u2019s Combing Through E-mails to See Which Ones Hillary Didn\u2019t Provide\u000aSpencer Irvine  \u2014   June 24, 2015\u000a \u000a \u000aSo Hillary isn\u2019t completely transparent, contrary to what some liberals and media outlets are saying? We\u2019re not surprised that there are missing e-mails .\u000aShare This\u000aAbout the author\u000aSpencer Irvine\u000aSpencer Irvine graduated from Brigham Young University in International Relations and currently works for AIM running operations and social media.\u000aRelated Posts\u000a
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VHome » Guest Columns » The Joint Chiefs of Staff: Our Last, Best Hope to Stop a Bad Nuclear Deal With Iran\u000aThe Joint Chiefs of Staff: Our Last, Best Hope to Stop a Bad Nuclear Deal With Iran\u000aLt. Colonel James G. Zumwalt, USMC (Ret.)  \u2014   June 24, 2015\u000a \u000a \u000aWe are days away from the June 30th deadline by which the U.S. and Iran are to have finalized a comprehensive nuclear agreement. The framework agreement President Obama announced in early April ignored the mandate of six U.N. Security Council resolutions as well as his own promise to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.\u000aNonetheless, he made it clear, with or without U.S. Senate approval, the deal would become reality-threatening to use his veto if necessary to do so.\u000aThe U.S. Senate  has a constitutional mandate  to ratify all treaties. However, on May 7th, the Senate passed a bill relinquishing that authority as to this treaty. The bill reversed the normal Senate ratification process. Instead of 67 votes being required for treaty approval, 67 votes are  now required to block  the deal.\u000aThe normal treaty process puts the onus upon a President unlikely, in this case, to amass the necessary 67 votes for approval. However, this bill now puts that onus on a Senate majority unlikely to muster the necessary 67 votes to block it. This leaves but one authoritative body positioned to de-rail Obama\u2019s runaway \u201cnuclear-deal-with-Iran-at-any-cost\u201d train.\u000aThe Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) need to take a bold step, never before taken, to demonstrate to the American people just how bad this deal really is.\u000aIn writing the U.S. Constitution, our Founding Fathers provided us with an amazing tool for governance. Interestingly, as Obama exercises authority in ways never intended by them, he does so relying upon others today not to follow his own example. What role then can our senior military leaders, working within the confines of the Constitution, play in the midst of a constitutional crisis endangering our national security? While recognizing the need for a military, our Founding Fathers wisely subordinated it to civilian authority.\u000aFor two plus centuries, the military has never challenged the constitutional reins placed upon it. This is a tribute not only to the Founding Fathers but generations of military leaders loyally adhering to this mandate.\u000aLittle known to most Americans, there was one time in our history when concerns the military might be used illegally generated action to prevent it. The fear was not of a rogue military leader but of a rogue civilian one. During the Watergate crisis, Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger became concerned Nixon\u2019s mental state might prompt him to take illegal action. In an  unprecedented act  circumventing his own constitutional authority, Schlesinger ordered the JCS to disregard any call to nuclear arms by Nixon. Thus, military authority has always remained true to its oath to \u201csupport and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.\u201d\u000aObama\u2019s desire for a nuclear agreement with Iran despite its disastrous consequences-an end result to which Senatorial malfeasance will have contributed if it fails to muster the 67 votes needed to block the treaty-calls for extraordinary JCS action.\u000aMuch better so than their civilian masters, the JCS understands the true threat posed by nukes in the hands of Iranian mullahs driven by an apocalyptical mindset. The JCS knows this deal becomes the means by which those mullahs, now only holding an empty gun, will be given a nuclear bullet to load into it. Regardless of whether Tehran gets the bullet sooner (through an illegal breakout), or later (through legal compliance), the JCS understands the folly in believing Iran will act responsibly and not use it.\u000aThese military leaders also know it is foolish to put faith into the retaliatory concept of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). While MAD may have worked well during the Cold War to prevent a nuclear exchange between adversaries, it will not work well with Armageddon-minded mullahs.\u000aParty politics and an irresponsible media also cloud the public\u2019s understanding of the real dangers presented by this deal with Iran.\u000aThus, extraordinary action by recognized experts who can truly define America\u2019s national security interests would carry tremendous weight with an American public struggling to understand its terms. As the Constitution precludes the military from forcefully imposing its will upon its civilian masters, the JCS is left with but one option.\u000aTo underscore the danger the deal poses, the JCS should resign en masse should Obama insist on signing it.\u000aThere are few examples of senior military officers protesting civilian authority decisions they believed endangered our national security.  In late 1965 , the JCS requested a private meeting with President Johnson to express concerns America was sinking into a Vietnam quagmire. But after being rebuked by Johnson, they failed to take the next step in registering their concerns by resigning. Years later, one who proved willing to take such a courageous step against civilian authority was  Marine Corps Lieutenant General Greg Newbold .\u000aOn track for promotion in 2002, Newbold was serving as JCS Director of Operations when he abruptly resigned to protest the Bush Administration\u2019s plan to invade Iraq. Because in both these examples civilian authority failed to heed military advice, two very costly wars resulted.\u000aAn en masse resignation in 1965 by the JCS may well have awakened the American public to the dangers ahead. Similarly, thirty-seven years later, an en masse JCS resignation supporting Newbold\u2019s position may have avoided another war.\u000aIn 1836, during the last days of the siege of the Alamo, the American commander, Lieutenant Colonel William B. Travis, drew a line in the dirt with his sword. Vastly outnumbered by the Mexican army and knowing death was imminent, Travis asked those willing to stay and fight to cross the line. All but one did so.\u000aJCS members must now draw their own line, deciding whether to cross it and resign en masse should Obama insist on signing a bad nuclear deal with Iran.\u000aTheir decision pits survival of self against survival of country. Hopefully, remembering the Alamo, they will opt for the latter.\u000a \u000aGuest columns do not necessarily reflect the views of Accuracy in Media or its staff.\u000aShare This\u000aAbout the author\u000aLt. Colonel James G. Zumwalt, USMC (Ret.)\u000aFamily Security Matters Contributing Editor Lt. Colonel James G. Zumwalt, USMC (ret) is a retired Marine infantry officer who served in the Vietnam War, the US invasion of Panama and the first Gulf war. He is the author of "Bare Feet, Iron Will--Stories from the Other Side of Vietnam's Battlefields" and frequently writes on foreign policy and defense issues.\u000aGet our free daily email!\u000aEmail Address :\u000a
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VHome » Guest Columns » I am DISGUSTED by Obama\u2019s new hostage policy\u000aI am DISGUSTED by Obama\u2019s new hostage policy\u000aLt. Col. (Retired) Allen West  \u2014   June 25, 2015\u000a \u000a \u000aSadly, President Obama just put every American at risk by allowing families to pay ransoms to Islamic terrorists.\u000aHe announced more government agencies, but said nothing about killing the terrorists who\u2019d think about kidnapping Americans. Obama just abdicated the responsibility of the federal government to protect Americans. He has abandoned Saeed Abedini, Amir Hekmati, Jason Reznian and Robert Levinson. Now, his vision is for the federal government to be a broker between the families and Islamic terrorists.\u000aAs reported by Fox News :\u000aThe Obama administration was accused Wednesday of giving terrorists an incentive to kidnap as it unveiled a hostage policy overhaul allowing families of U.S. hostages to pay ransom \u2013 and allowing the U.S. government to help families communicate with captors. \u000a\u201cThis doesn\u2019t fix anything,\u201d Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., a leading critic of the administration\u2019s hostage policy, told Fox News. \u201cThe money that we\u2019re going to be paying ISIS is going to be used to buy arms and to buy equipment to fight Americans and to fight the Iraqis.\u201d \u000aBut the White House said the changes are being unveiled with the families and victims in mind. \u000a\u201cWe\u2019re not going to abandon you. We\u2019re going to stand by you,\u201d Obama said of hostages\u2019 families, speaking at the White House on Wednesday. \u000aThe policy review was formally released shortly before noon, and includes a host of changes beyond the clarifications on ransom discussions \u2013 notably, the creation of a new bureaucratic structure for handling hostage cases. \u000aThe White House plans to establish a Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell responsible for coordinating the recovery of hostages; a Hostage Response Group responsible for coordinating hostage policies; and the position of \u201cspecial presidential envoy for hostage affairs.\u201d Obama said this is being done to sync up various efforts, citing past coordination problems. \u000aI don\u2019t give a damn about a new fusion cell, that\u2019s not a solution; it\u2019s a reaction.\u000aThe announcement amounts to a shift in the U.S. approach to hostages. It was considered a major break from past practice last year when the Obama administration traded five Taliban leaders for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. The latest policy changes could open the door to more deals, even if they are only struck with families of hostages. \u000aBasically, you\u2019re on your own \u2013 but call the fusion cell for pizza.\u000aCritics worry they could also encourage more kidnappings, while effectively aiding the enemy. \u000a\u201cThe concern that I have is that by lifting that long-held principle [of not paying ransoms], you could be endangering more Americans here and overseas,\u201d House Speaker John Boehner said. \u000a\u201cYou\u2019re going to have to have the government now facilitating payments from the families here to the terrorists there while at the same time we have troops on the ground \u2026 fighting the same people that we\u2019re paying money to,\u201d Hunter said Wednesday. \u201cYou\u2019re worth more captured now than you would be otherwise.\u201d\u000aWe don\u2019t negotiate with terrorists \u2013 but we\u2019re establishing a group to help YOU negotiate with terrorists. This is doggone FUBAR!\u000a \u000aGuest columns do not necessarily reflect the views of Accuracy in Media or its staff.\u000aShare This\u000aAbout the author\u000aLt. Col. (Retired) Allen West\u000aLt. Col (Retired) Allen West served 22 years in the US Army and represented Florida's 22nd Congressional District in the US House of Representatives from 2011-2013. He is a member of the Citizens' Commission on Benghazi . To hear more from Col. West, visit www.allenbwest.com .\u000aGet our free daily email!\u000aEmail Address :\u000a
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VPrint PDF\u000aAbstract\u000aIn 2005, the Supreme Court held in Kelo v. City of New London that the government can seize private property and transfer it to another private party for economic development. This type of taking was deemed to be for a \u201cpublic use\u201d and allowed under the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. As a result, if a city claims that a certain privately owned property would generate additional tax revenue, create more jobs, or even simply make the city more attractive if owned by another private party, that city can use the power of eminent domain to seize the property. Private-property ownership has become a precarious proposition, subject to the economic development whims of the government. Thanks to Kelo, one\u2019s home is one\u2019s castle only until the government thinks someone else can build a better castle. Cronyism is bad enough when favors are provided to politically connected interests through subsidies and other special treatment. Kelo has made it easy for government officials to benefit their friends and politically connected businesses using the awesome power of eminent domain. States have responded by passing laws intended to provide protection from these economic development takings\u2014but Congress has failed to take meaningful action in the decade since this landmark decision. At the tenth anniversary of Kelo, Congress should provide property owners in all states necessary protection against economic development and closely related takings, including abusive takings based on overly broad blight laws.\u000aOn June 23, 2005, the United States Supreme Court held in Kelo v. City of New London [1] that the government can seize private property and transfer it to another private party for economic development. This type of taking was deemed to be for a \u201cpublic use\u201d and allowed under the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution.\u000aAs a result, if a city claims that a certain privately owned property would generate additional tax revenue, create more jobs, or even simply make the city more attractive if owned by another private party, that city can use the power of eminent domain to seize the property. Private-property ownership has become a precarious proposition, subject to the economic development whims of the government. After Kelo, one\u2019s home is one\u2019s castle only until the government thinks someone else can build a better castle.\u000aStates have responded by passing laws that are intended to provide protection from these economic development takings. However, Congress has failed to take meaningful action in the decade since this landmark decision. [2] At the tenth anniversary of the Kelo case, Congress should provide property owners in all states necessary protection against economic development and closely related takings.\u000aOverview of Kelo\u000aIn the late 1990s, New London, Connecticut, was facing tough times, with an unemployment rate nearly double that of the state and the population at its lowest in nearly 80 years. To promote economic growth and revitalize the city, New London sought to redevelop its Fort Trumbull area. As proposed, the area would have included a new conference hotel, restaurants, shops, a renovated marina, and research and development office space. The large pharmaceutical company Pfizer had announced its plan to build a major research facility in the area, and the city\u2019s planned development was intended to capitalize on the company\u2019s arrival. [3]\u000aTo implement its plan, the city used eminent domain to seize multiple non-blighted properties for this economic development effort, including the home of Susette Kelo. The specific question that had to be answered in Kelo was whether the seizure of private property for economic development constituted a \u201cpublic use\u201d under the Fifth Amendment. The Takings Clause, found in the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution, restricts the government\u2019s ability to seize private property: \u201cNor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.\u201d [4] In a 5\u20134 opinion, the Supreme Court held that New London\u2019s taking of Kelo\u2019s home and other properties was a public use and therefore a constitutional exercise of eminent domain. [5]\u000aImplications of Kelo\u000aEven before Kelo, the Supreme Court had interpreted \u201cpublic use\u201d more broadly than what the language would suggest. As might be expected, it does cover takings of property for \u201cuse by the public.\u201d This would include takings for public ownership, such as a road, and takings for private parties for use by the public, such as a utility. [6] However, before Kelo, the Supreme Court had also determined that \u201cpublic use\u201d should mean \u201cpublic purpose.\u201d [7] This dramatic shift ignored express constitutional language that covers narrow situations and applied new language to cover very broad situations.\u000aThis \u201cpublic purpose\u201d approach led to great expansions of eminent domain power allowing private property to be transferred to other private parties. In 1954, the court held in Berman v. Parker [8] that non-blighted property could be seized in an alleged blighted area. In 1984, the court held in Hawaii Housing Authority v. Midkiff [9] that property could be seized to address an unusual land oligopoly situation where land ownership was extremely concentrated.\u000aIn her dissent in Kelo, Justice Sandra Day O\u2019Connor claimed that those two cases were distinguishable from Kelo because the takings targeted property that was inflicting \u201caffirmative harm on society.\u201d [10] While Justice O\u2019Connor was trying to suggest a narrow application of the eminent domain power prior to Kelo, this is not a completely accurate characterization.\u000aThe Berman case in particular has far broader implications than she suggested, giving government the ability to abuse blight laws to seize private property. Regardless, the term \u201cpublic use\u201d still placed some limit on what could be seized. Kelo changed all of that. In Kelo, the court effectively deleted \u201cpublic use\u201d from the Fifth Amendment.\u000aNo Property Is Safe. Thanks to Kelo, if the government believes that another private party can make better economic use of a property, it can be seized. This problem is exacerbated because courts defer to government about whether something is a public use and whether a plan even makes sense. Justice O\u2019Connor truly captured the extent of the problems with Kelo in her dissent, including this important point: \u201cThe specter of condemnation hangs over all property. Nothing is to prevent the State from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory.\u201d [11]\u000aThose who will be harmed the most will be low-income individuals. There will be a \u201creverse Robin Hood effect.\u201d The government is not likely to go after valuable properties to help promote economic development and generate more tax revenue. Instead, it will seek out properties that are not generating the desired economic benefits (and cost less) and transfer those properties to private parties whom government officials think will provide the desired effects. Further, those with fewer resources are less able to challenge the seizures of property, making it easier for government to seize the property.\u000aNo Practical Protection from Takings for Private Use. The majority opinion asserted that private property still may not be seized for the sole purpose of transferring it to another private party nor can property be taken \u201cunder the mere pretext of a public purpose, when its actual purpose was to bestow a private benefit.\u201d [12]\u000aThis is nice in theory, but is a fallacy in practice. If the government seizes private property because government officials want to help a developer build a shopping mall, for example, the taking will still appear to have a public purpose because presumably it will have an alleged economic benefit. It is virtually impossible to determine whether a taking is for a private benefit or for a public purpose. As Justice O\u2019Connor explained, \u201cThe trouble with economic development takings is that private benefit and incidental public benefit are, by definition, merged and mutually reinforcing.\u201d [13]\u000aCronyism at Its Worst. A developer can use the government as its middleman to seize properties and avoid paying what likely would be their true costs. Cronyism is bad enough when favors are provided to politically connected interests through subsidies and other special treatment. Kelo has made it easy for government officials to benefit their friends and politically connected businesses using the awesome power of eminent domain. A family\u2019s home could be demolished and their property rights trampled to help a developer. On top of that, the government can use this power in a haphazard manner, with the court unlikely to question the merits of the takings, regardless of how unnecessary or poorly conceived the takings might be.\u000aWhy Congressional Action Is Necessary\u000aIf the Supreme Court gutted First Amendment protections or other fundamental rights, there would be widespread outrage. While states could provide some protection, it is highly unlikely that the public or policymakers would deem this adequate in protecting federal constitutional rights. The same holds true for private property rights. This by itself is a reason to take action.\u000aMost states have responded in some fashion to Kelo. Many of the reforms will likely be sufficient to address the unusual and rare situation, as in Kelo, where a city readily admits that it is seizing private property solely for economic development. However, most of these reforms are statutory, not constitutional, and therefore do not provide the level of protection that is warranted; a statute can generally be changed far more easily than a constitutional amendment. Further, the reforms do not properly address the way economic development takings usually happen, such as through overly broad blight laws. [14] There are post-Kelo abuses that illustrate that eminent domain abuse is alive and well.\u000aIn New York, private property was seized for office space and apartment towers. [15] In another New York project, property was seized for Columbia University, a private institution. [16] A Glendale, Colorado, carpet store could soon be seized and ownership transferred to a developer for an entertainment district. [17] These examples are all based on addressing so-called blight. New Jersey\u2019s Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, unrelated to any claim of blight, is seeking to seize a home to redevelop the surrounding neighborhood, even though it has no clear plans for the property. [18]\u000aBlight Abuse. City officials do not usually admit that they are taking private property solely for economic development. They generally claim another reason to serve as a pretext for seizing property for economic development. Blight is one of the most frequent reasons. [19]\u000aOn the surface, the idea that government would be seizing property to address blight may not sound particularly bad. However, there are two critical ways that many state blight laws allow government to abuse eminent domain power.\u000aBlight definition: The word \u201cblight\u201d suggests property that is unfit to live in or is somehow unsafe. However, blight laws generally do not use such a definition. Instead, the definition is often extremely broad, covering properties that are in perfectly fine condition, allowing almost any property to fall under the definition. [20] These broad and subjective definitions make it easier for cities to seize private property for economic development while pointing to \u201cblight\u201d as the justification. It also makes it easier to benefit private interests and exacerbate the cronyism problem.\u000aNon-blighted properties in blighted areas: Even if a property is in pristine condition, the government might be able to seize it if it falls under a subjectively determined blighted area. Even if distinct boundaries could be established between a blighted area and a non-blighted area, this does not necessarily mean that a city could still not label all the properties as existing in one blighted area.\u000aIt is important to remember that courts generally do not scrutinize the actions and conclusions of the government when it comes to takings for blight. If a city claims that a property is blighted or in a blighted area, that usually suffices.\u000aUrban renewal laws that address blight have caused serious harm, particularly among minority communities. A 2007 Institute for Justice Report found that:\u000aUnder that act [Federal Housing Act of 1949], which was in force between 1949 and 1973, cities were authorized to use the power of eminent domain to clear \u201cblighted neighborhoods\u201d for \u201chigher uses.\u201d In 24 years, 2,532 projects were carried out in 992 cities that displaced one million people, two-thirds of them African American. [21]\u000aAn amicus brief filed in Kelo by the NAACP, along with other organizations, argued:\u000aThe history of eminent domain is rife with abuse specifically targeting minority neighborhoods. Indeed, the displacement of African-Americans and urban renewal projects were so intertwined that \u201curban renewal\u201d was often referred to as \u201cNegro removal.\u201d [22]\u000aBlight laws are still being abused to promote economic development. One important example is the Atlantic Yards project in New York. The government seized alleged blighted property for a basketball arena for the now Brooklyn Nets as well as property for apartment and office towers. [23]\u000aIn 2009, the highest New York court, the Court of Appeals, in Goldstein v. New York State Urban Development Corp. allowed a very broad definition of blight, [24] admitting:\u000aIt may be that the bar has now been set too low\u2014that what will now pass as \u201cblight,\u201d as that expression has come to be understood and used by political appointees to public corporations relying upon studies paid for by developers, should not be permitted to constitute a predicate for the invasion of property rights and the razing of homes and businesses. But any such limitation upon the sovereign power of eminent domain as it has come to be defined in the urban renewal context is a matter for the Legislature, not the courts. [25]\u000aThe agency with the power to seize the property did not talk about blight until two years after the project was announced [26] and the developer paid for the blight study. [27] George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin has argued, \u201cIn Goldstein v. New York State Urban Development Corp., the Court of Appeals adopted a virtually limitless definition of \u2018blight\u2019 that includes any area where there is \u2018economic underdevelopment\u2019 or \u2018stagnation.\u2019\u201d [28] In his dissent, Judge Robert Smith stated: \u201cThey [the state agency\u2019s consultants] did not find, and it does not appear they could find, that the area where petitioners live is a blighted area or slum of the kind that prompted twentieth century courts to relax the public use limitation on the eminent domain power.\u201d\u000aAll of these factors were still not enough for the New York Court of Appeals to block the takings. Even worse, the federal Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the taking, [29] stressing the need for deference just like the New York Court of Appeals. [30]\u000aWhat Should Congress Do?\u000aAt a minimum, the immediate response, in light of the tenth anniversary of Kelo, should be to address economic development and closely related takings. There are many ways that legislation can address these takings, but there are some important considerations that Congress should remember. The devil is in the details; the way any protections are drafted is critical and can make the difference between real protection and the mere perception of protection. Government will seek to find end runs around any prohibitions. It is vital that these end runs are addressed.\u000aThere is no question that drafting language to provide clear protections from these economic development takings can be challenging. Critics will likely claim that language is either over-inclusive or under-inclusive in terms of when property may not be seized. While well-established takings consistent with a \u201cuse by the public,\u201d such as for utilities and common carriers, should not be prohibited, it is better to be over-inclusive than under-inclusive when prohibiting takings. Individual rights should easily trump the government\u2019s power to use eminent domain.\u000aCreating a Burden of Proof. Often, prohibitions are drafted in a manner that a taking is prohibited \u201cfor\u201d a particular reason. Such a prohibition requires courts to examine the subjective intent of why a city or other governmental body seized private property.\u000aIf language states that the government may not take property for economic development, then that may seem like economic development takings are prohibited. However, the government will simply assert a non-economic development reason for taking private property, and courts are unlikely to try to figure out whether this is merely a pretext for economic development takings.\u000aAs a result, if language has this type of subjective element, burden of proof language is essential. Both Michigan [31] and Nevada [32] in their post-Kelo state constitutional amendments created such language. The purpose is to require that the government prove that a taking is for a proper public use. Since there may be multiple reasons for taking property, the government should ideally prove that it would have seized the property even if there was no economic development benefit.\u000aAddressing Blight Abuse. Any legislation should expressly address the abuse of blight laws. \u201cBlight\u201d should not be so broadly defined to cover almost anything. For property to be considered blighted, it should pose a concrete and imminent risk to public health and safety. Only property that itself is blighted should be allowed to be taken; non-blighted properties should not be seized on the grounds that they are located in an alleged blighted area.\u000aEnforcement. While most economic development and closely related takings are on the state and local level, the law should also apply to the federal government. To address takings by state and local governments, the law should make states and local governments that engage in prohibited activities ineligible to receive certain federal funds (as opposed to simply prohibiting funds for use in a prohibited activity). The relevant funding should at least cover federal economic development funds, including Community Development Block Grants. [33]\u000aPrivate Right of Action. Private property owners should be able to challenge takings under any new law in court. In addition, reasonable attorney\u2019s fees and related incurred costs should be available to reimburse a property owner who wins his case.\u000aBipartisan Support for Reform\u000aAddressing economic development takings is far from a partisan issue. Just last year, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Private Property Rights Protection Act of 2014 [34] by an overwhelming 353-to-65 vote. [35] The legislation attempted to prohibit economic development takings and had several important provisions, [36] including a private cause of action and a burden of proof requirement requiring the government \u201cto show by clear and convincing evidence that the taking is not for economic development.\u201d The legislation though does not appear to properly address the problems with blight takings, at least not in an express manner. [37]\u000aCongress Has a Real Chance to Pass a Meaningful Law. When the City of New London seized private property for economic development, that was bad enough. But those takings served no purpose. Empty fields now sit where the seized homes used to stand. [38] The abuse of blight laws has allowed arrogant government officials to seize people\u2019s homes and neighborhoods simply because they think their vision for a community trumps the rights of the individuals who live in that community.\u000aIt is easy to see why there is such wide support for addressing Kelo. This support, in conjunction with the 10th anniversary of the infamous case, should give Congress a real chance to enact protections for property owners. The American dream of owning a home should no longer be threatened by the nightmare of eminent domain abuse.\u000a\u2014Daren Bakst is Research Fellow in Agricultural Policy in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, of the Institute for Economic Freedom and Opportunity, at The Heritage Foundation.\u000aShow references in this reportHide References\u000a[1] Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005), http://laws.findlaw.com/us/000/04-108.html (accessed June 10, 2015).\u000a[2] In 2005, Congress did add the \u201cBond amendment\u201d to the fiscal year (FY) 2006 transportation/HUD spending bill. The amendment stated that no covered funds could be used for projects that used eminent domain in a manner not allowed under the amendment. It only prohibited funds for projects employing economic development takings that \u201cprimarily benefit private entities.\u201d As discussed later in this Backgrounder, being able to successfully make such a claim is almost impossible.  This amendment has been added to other appropriations bills, including the \u201cCromnibus\u201d bill (for FY 2015).  To learn more about the amendment, see, for example, \u201cStatutory Prohibition on Use of HUD Fiscal Year (FY) 2006 Funds for Eminent Domain-Related Activities; Notice,\u201d Federal Register, Vol. 71, No. 136, July 17, 2006, p. 40634, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2006-07-17/html/06-6258.htm (accessed June 10, 2015).\u000a[3] Kelo v. City of New London.\u000a[4] U.S. Constitution, Amendment 5, https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fifth_amendment (accessed June 10, 2015).\u000a[5] For a much more detailed discussion of Kelo and the history of eminent domain power, Heritage is releasing another paper concurrently with this paper. Paul J. Larkin, Jr., \u201cRevisiting Kelo,\u201d Heritage Foundation Legal Memorandum No. 155, June 22, 2015, http://report.heritage.org/lm155 .\u000a[6] Kelo v. City of New London (O\u2019Connor dissenting).\u000a[7] Kelo v. City of New London.\u000a[8] Berman v. Parker, 348 U.S. 26 (1954), http://laws.findlaw.com/us/348/26.html (accessed June 10, 2015).\u000a[9] Hawaii Housing Authority v. Midkiff, 467 U.S. 229 (1984), http://laws.findlaw.com/us/467/229.html (accessed June 10, 2015).\u000a[10] Kelo v. City of New London (O\u2019Connor dissenting).\u000a[12] Kelo v. City of New London.\u000a[13] Kelo v. City of New London (O\u2019Connor dissenting).\u000a[14] See, for instance, Ilya Somin, \u201cThe Limits of Backlash: Assessing the Political Response to Kelo,\u201d Minnesota Law Review, Vol. 93, No. 6 (June 2009), pp. 2100\u20132178, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=976298 (accessed June 9, 2015).\u000a[15] Goldstein v. New York State Urban Development Corp., 13 N.Y.3d 511 (2009), http://www.courts.state.ny.us/reporter/3dseries/2009/2009_08677.htm (accessed June 10, 2015).\u000a[16] Kaur v. New York State Urban Development Corp., 15 N.Y.3d 235 (2010), https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/2481399/kaur-v-urban-dev-corp/ (accessed June 10, 2015). See also Ilya Somin, \u201cLet There Be Blight: Blight Condemnations in New York after Goldstein and Kaur,\u201d Fordham Urban Law Journal, Vol. 38, No. 4 (October 2011), pp. 1193\u20131219, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1924518 (accessed June 9, 2015), and Robert Thomas, \u201cNew York Still Has \u2018Unfrozen Caveman Judges\u2019 Who are \u2018Frightened and Confused\u2019 by Eminent Domain Blight,\u201d InverseCondemnation.com, June 24, 2010, http://www.inversecondemnation.com/inversecondemnation/2010/06/new-york-still-has-unfrozen-caveman-judges-who-are-frightened-and-confused-by-blight.html (accessed June 9, 2015).\u000a[17] Nick Sibilla, \u201cEminent Domain Land Grab Would Wipe Out Small Business Owned for Over 25 Years,\u201d Institute for Justice, May 28, 2015, https://www.ij.org/eminent-domain-land-grab-would-wipe-out-small-business-owned-for-over-25-years (accessed June 9, 2015).\u000a[18] \u201cCasino Reinvestment Development Authority v. Charles and Lucinda Birnbaum et al.: Atlantic City Eminent Domain,\u201d Institute for Justice, https://www.ij.org/atlantic-city-eminent-domain (accessed June 9, 2015).\u000a[19] Private property is also becoming threatened under a push for transit-oriented development. A legitimate public use, such as transportation, could be used as a pretext to seize private property for economic development around rail stations (even stations that do not exist yet or may never exist), even for areas a significant distance from stations. To learn more about this issue, see Daren Bakst, \u201cRiding the Eminent Domain Rail: Triangle Transit Authority Is N.C.\u2019s Case Study in Eminent Domain,\u201d John Locke Foundation, September 22, 2006, http://www.johnlocke.org/acrobat/spotlights/spotlight_296ttaemdomn.pdf (accessed June 9, 2015). Honolulu is currently engaged in a major rail project involving transit-oriented development. See Choon James, \u201cRail\u2019s Transit-Oriented Development an Assault on Private Property,\u201d Honolulu Civil Beat, November 2, 2012, http://www.civilbeat.com/2012/11/17545-rails-transit-oriented-development-an-assault-on-private-property/ (accessed June 9, 2015), and A. Kam Napier and Janis L. Magin, \u201cHonolulu Rail Transit\u2019s Eminent Domain,\u201d Pacific Business News, May 27, 2015, http://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/print-edition/2015/03/27/honolulu-rail-transit-s-eminent-domain.html (accessed June 9, 2015). According to the Honolulu Rail Transit project site, \u201cTransit oriented development around rail stations will sustain the demand for jobs in a variety of industries for many years into the future.\u201d Honolulu Rail Transit, \u201cThe Rail Facts,\u201d 2015, http://www.honolulutransit.org/rail-facts.aspx (accessed June 9, 2015). The cartoon at the following website captures the issue nicely: John T. Pritchett, \u201cT.O.D. Transit Oriented Destruction,\u201d http://www.pritchettcartoons.com/tod-2.htm (accessed June 9, 2015).\u000a[20] For a comprehensive and updated discussion of the blight issue (including state blight laws), state responses to Kelo, and more, see Ilya Somin, The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015). To provide just one specific state example, see the definition of \u201cblighted area\u201d under the Colorado statutes, C.R.S. 31-25-103, http://www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/Colorado/ (accessed June 10, 2015). See also these articles on how Colorado has been applying the blight statute: Nick Sibilla, \u201cDon\u2019t Blight the Hand that Feeds You: Stop Eminent Domain Abuse,\u201d The Denver Post Idea Blog, April 10, 2013, http://blogs.denverpost.com/opinion/2013/04/10/dont-blight-the-hand-that-feeds-you-stop-eminent-domain-abuse/36683/ (accessed June 9, 2015), and Nick Sibilla, \u201cEminent Domain Land Grab Would Wipe out Small Business Owned for Over 25 Years,\u201d Institute for Justice, May 28, 2015, https://www.ij.org/eminent-domain-land-grab-would-wipe-out-small-business-owned-for-over-25-years (accessed June 9, 2015).\u000a[21] Mindy Thomas Fullilove, \u201cEminent Domain & African Americans: What Is the Price of the Commons?\u201d Institute for Justice, Perspectives on Eminent Domain Abuse series, Vol. 1, undated, http://castlecoalition.org/eminent-domain-a-african-americans (accessed June 9, 2015).\u000a[22] Kelo v. City of New London, Brief of Amici Curiae, NAACP and AARP et al., https://www.ij.org/images/pdf_folder/private_property/kelo/naacp02.pdf (accessed June 10, 2015).\u000a[23] Goldstein v. Pataki, 516 F.3d 50 (2nd Cir. 2008), http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=1542816312841407237&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr (accessed June 10, 2015), and Steven Silverberg, \u201cNew York Court of Appeals Upholds \u2018Atlantic Yards\u2019 Condemnation,\u201d New York Zoning and Municipal Law Blog, http://blog.szlawfirm.net/2009/11/new_york_court_of_appeals_upho_1.html (accessed June 9, 2015).\u000a[24] Ilya Somin, \u201cBlight, Pretext, and Eminent Domain in New York,\u201d City Square blog, Fordham Urban Law Journal, March 12, 2012, http://urbanlawjournal.com/2-ilya-somins-reply-to-rick-hills-blight-pretext-and-eminent-domain-in-new-york/ (accessed June 9, 2015).\u000a[25] Goldstein v. New York State Urban Development Corp., 13 N.Y.3d 511 (2009).\u000a[26] Goldstein v. New York State Urban Development Corp., 13 N.Y.3d 511 (2009) (Smith dissenting), and Damon Root, \u201cThe Majority Is Much Too Deferential to the Self-Serving Determination by Empire State Development Corporation,\u201d Reason.com, November 24, 2009, http://reason.com/blog/2009/11/24/the-majority-is-much-too-defer (accessed June 10, 2015).\u000a[27] See, for instance, Goldstein v. New York State Urban Development Corp., 13 N.Y.3d 511 (2009); Somin, The Grasping Hand, Chapter 7; and news release, \u201cNew York High Court Upholds Eminent Domain for Private Gain,\u201d Institute for Justice, November 24, 2009, https://www.ij.org/new-york-high-court-upholds-eminent-domain-for-private-gain (accessed June 9, 2015).\u000a[28] Somin, \u201cBlight, Pretext, and Eminent Domain.\u201d\u000a[29] Goldstein v. Pataki, 516 F.3d 50 (2nd Cir. 2008).\u000a[30] This entire concept of broad deference in determining what constitutes a proper \u201cpublic use\u201d is problematic. As Justice Clarence Thomas pointed out in his dissent in Kelo: \u201cThere is no justification, however, for affording almost insurmountable deference to legislative conclusions that a use serves a \u2018public use.\u2019 To begin with, a court owes no deference to a legislature\u2019s judgment concerning the quintessentially legal question of whether the government owns, or the public has a legal right to use, the taken property. Even under the \u2018public purpose\u2019 interpretation, moreover, it is most implausible that the Framers intended to defer to legislatures as to what satisfies the Public Use Clause, uniquely among all the express provisions of the Bill of Rights. We would not defer to a legislature\u2019s determination of the various circumstances that establish, for example, when a search of a home would be reasonable.\u201d Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005) (Thomas dissenting). Courts have generally taken deference way too far; imagine a court deferring to a legislature on what constitutes a reasonable search and seizure, without the courts stepping in except in rare and unusual circumstances. This would be viewed as an abrogation of judicial duties. The same should hold true for a \u201cpublic use.\u201d As for the Goldstein case, the courts took the deference to an extreme.\u000a[31] State Constitution of Michigan, Article X § 2, 1963, http://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(cimoywhkpau1kjrcakyuhugj))/mileg.aspx?page=GetObject&objectname=mcl-Article-X-2 (accessed June 10, 2015). The burden of proof language was added in 2006: \u201cIn a condemnation action, the burden of proof is on the condemning authority to demonstrate, by the preponderance of the evidence, that the taking of a private property is for a public use, unless the condemnation action involves a taking for the eradication of blight, in which case the burden of proof is on the condemning authority to demonstrate, by clear and convincing evidence, that the taking of that property is for a public use.\u201d\u000a[32] The Constitution of the State of Nevada, Article I § 22, 2008, https://www.leg.state.nv.us/const/nvconst.html (accessed June 10, 2015). Burden of proof language: \u201dIn all eminent domain actions, the government shall have the burden to prove public use.\u201d\u000a[33] Federal funding for transit projects should be conditioned on governments not improperly abusing eminent domain in connection with the project. These projects have been the source of abuse.\u000a[34] Private Property Rights Protection Act of 2014, H.R. 1944, 113th Cong., 2nd Sess., https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/1944 (accessed June 9, 2015).\u000a[35] Private Property Rights Protection Act of 2014, H.R. 1944, 113th Cong., 2nd Sess., Final Vote Results for Roll Call 67, February 26, 2014, http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2014/roll067.xml (accessed June 9, 2015).\u000a[36] The legislation addresses both the conveyance of ownership and lease interests, which is an important way of ensuring that the government does not simply circumvent a prohibition by owning property and leasing it back to a private party.\u000a[37] State and local governments may not use eminent domain for property to be used for economic development. The term \u201ceconomic development\u201d does not include \u201cremoving harmful uses of land provided such uses constitute an immediate threat to public health and safety.\u201d This indicates that states and local government can address legitimate blighted properties, which is appropriate. Even though properties with broad definitions of blight, and non-blighted properties within blighted areas, are not expressly allowed to be seized, it appears they still could be seized. It is possible that the government could seize broadly defined \u201cblighted\u201d properties or non-blighted properties in blighted areas by showing that the reason for the taking was to address these vague blight issues and not for economic development.\u000a[38] Jeff Jacoby, \u201cEminent Disaster: Homeowners in Connecticut Town were Dispossessed for Nothing,\u201d The Boston Globe, March 12, 2014, http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/03/12/the-devastation-caused-eminent-domain-abuse/yWsy0MNEZ91TM94PYQIh0L/story.html (accessed June 9, 2015).\u000a
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VJun 24\u000aThe People vs. The Washington Cartel: Restoring Liberty in the Age of Cronyism\u000aDespite gaining massive majorities on a conservative anti-Washington wave in 2014, the new Congress has quickly returned to Washington's business-as-usual.  The Washington Cartel of powerful politicians, well-connected lobbyists, and media elite continue to benefit from big government at the expense of Main Street and ordinary Americans.  Now is the time to break the Cartel.\u000aMore About the Speakers\u000aThe Honorable Ted Cruz (R-TX)\u000aUnited States Senator\u000a
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VLet the subsidies die\u000aJim DeMint \u2022 | June 23, 2015 | 10:48 am\u000aIn the five years since Obamacare became law, millions of Americans have seen their insurance premiums rise and their deductibles skyrocket. Millions more have been pushed out of their plans and onto Medicaid \u2014 a notoriously ineffective health program. And all the while, Washington has tried to paper over these problems with subsidies.\u000aSoon the Supreme Court will rule on the legality of the federal subsidies given to people who have purchased health coverage from Healthcare.gov, the federally-operated insurance exchange. In the case of King v. Burwell, the nine justices on the Supreme Court are given yet another opportunity to either apply the plain meaning of federal law, or to give the green light to the Obama administration's lawless and politically convenient handouts.\u000aIf the Supreme Court upholds the rule of law and blocks the Obama administration, attention will quickly turn to Congress. The big question: Will lawmakers try to save Obamacare from crumbling, or will lawmakers finally begin the process of removing Obamacare's obstacles to quality care and begin to start over with real reform?\u000aPlease enter your email address below to begin receiving the Health Care newsletter.\u000aYou must enter a valid email address in the field above!\u000aThank you for signing up for the Health Care newsletter! You should receive your first newsletter very soon.\u000aWe're sorry, there was an error processing your newsletter signup.  Please click here to visit our Newsletter Signup Center to register for this newsletter.\u000aMore Stories\u000aBY ROBERT KING | 07/06/15 12:23 AM\u000aThe fight started when insurers were required to disclose estimated 2016 rates for Obamacare customers.\u000aBY ROBERT KING | 07/05/15  5:58 PM\u000aSanders called Clinton "the candidate for most members of Congress and the Democratic establishment."\u000aBY ROBERT KING | 07/05/15 10:49 AM\u000aHe threw out 16 or 20-year term limits as examples.\u000aBY ROBERT KING | 07/04/15 11:06 AM\u000aOpponents point out that Obamacare is not lowering costs as originally promised.\u000aBY ROBERT KING | 07/04/15 10:13 AM\u000aSix world powers will relieve sanctions for Tehran with any nuclear agreement.\u000aWEX TV\u000aKerry 'absolutely committed' to June 30 Iran deal deadline\u000aThis should be an easy choice for opponents of Obamacare. The end of federally subsidized exchanges will be the first step in freeing patients, doctors, and insurers from government control. Unbelievably, however, some are considering legislation to extend the subsidies, should the Supreme Court block them.\u000aIt would be uncaring and unfair for Congress to force taxpayers to continue funding Obamacare's subsidies that do nothing to lower the real cost of coverage nor increase healthcare choices for most Americans. Extending the subsidies would be political malpractice, not just a mere Band-Aid upon an infected wound. Rather than diagnosing the underlying disease \u2014 a broken, unsustainable system \u2014 such a patch would allow Congress and the president to avoid making the tough decisions about cost and quality of care.\u000aIt would be far better for far more people if Congress simply repealed Obamacare, removed barriers to competition, and started fresh. Fortunately, many in Congress realize this. For example, Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., recently proposed the Premium Reduction and Insurance Market Reform Act of 2015, which would get rid of harmful regulations and end the benefit mandates that are driving Obamacare costs through the roof.\u000aA significant number of insurers have already requested double-digit rate increases for 2016. Why drive the nation further into debt by subsidizing unaffordable coverage, when Congress can just as easily make coverage more affordable? Gosar's bill takes the latter approach, as do several other proposals.\u000aNo one bill can fully "fix" Obamacare. The ultimate cure for Obamacare's sickness will have to be an all-of-the-above initiative \u2014 a panoply of health reforms that can be pursued piece by piece with full public understanding and transparency. Sweeping bills with thousands of pages are what got us into this mess; we shouldn't look for another grand top-down scheme to get us out of it.\u000aHeritage Foundation polling reveals that most Americans agree with this approach \u2014 and they want it to start sooner rather than later. Fifty-eight percent think healthcare in our nation is worse than it was four years ago. More than two-thirds (69 percent) agree that passing legislation to continue Obamacare subsidies just prolongs the problem. Why should Congress extend a system which clear majorities don't want?\u000aMore than seven of every 10 Americans (73 percent) either "somewhat agree" or "strongly agree" with removing Obamacare's requirements and regulations. They're right to think so: Getting rid of these requirements would reduce insurance premiums in 34 states. Millions of Americans would get cheaper healthcare if the mandates are allowed to die with the subsidies.\u000aAs far as conservatives are concerned, there shouldn't be any "somewhat" about it. The movement that has made the repeal of Obamacare a defining issue since 2010, that in 2014 helped to elect many candidates who ran on that issue to the House and Senate, and that stood against a President who falsely assured his countrymen "If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it," can ill afford to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.\u000aMost Americans already fault the President for his signature legislation and its attendant ills. Instead of doing Americans a disservice by extending subsidies, Congress should leverage a Supreme Court victory to restore competitive insurance markets, put patients and doctors back in the driver's seat, and finally get the government out of our business.\u000aJim DeMint, a former Republican U.S. senator from South Carolina, is president of The Heritage Foundation.Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions .\u000aSHARE\u000a
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VJun 24\u000aThe People vs. The Washington Cartel: Restoring Liberty in the Age of Cronyism\u000aDespite gaining massive majorities on a conservative anti-Washington wave in 2014, the new Congress has quickly returned to Washington's business-as-usual.  The Washington Cartel of powerful politicians, well-connected lobbyists, and media elite continue to benefit from big government at the expense of Main Street and ordinary Americans.  Now is the time to break the Cartel.\u000aMore About the Speakers\u000aThe Honorable Ted Cruz (R-TX)\u000aUnited States Senator\u000a
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