Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Cops shoot pellets to stop student rally (6). Cops shoot pellets to stop student rally (6) [The Raw Story | A rational voice - Alternative news] 9:12:03 PM    comment []

Dr. Peter Rost: The New Robber Barons. The U.S. Department of Labor claims we have an unemployment rate of 4.9% According to "the Economist," however, the true unemployment rate in the U.S. is over 8%, or 12.6 million Americans. The difference is due to the fact that the U.S. Government doesn't count people as unemployed after six months without a job I recently joined the ranks of our many unemployed citizens. The termination of my employment as a Vice President at Pfizer was subject to intense media interest, partly due to the fact that Pfizer notified the press before they informed me. Contrary to press reports, however, I have received no severance payments and for the first time in my life I am eligible for unemployment benefits; $13,078. At this annual income level my family of four would actually fall below the federal poverty level,quite a difference from a year ago when my salary was over half a million. I'm also uninsured for the first time in my life and I have to pay the full price for drugs, just like 67 million other uninsured Americans. Contrary to many others, however, I do have a choice. In accordance with federal COBRA law, I was offered the opportunity to continue my health care coverage for 18 months. There was only one hitch; I had to pay $15,269 per year to receive this benefit. I decided that with an income of $13,078 that didn't make sense. Clearly the system we have today isn't just broke. The system is utterly and completely sick and our weakest citizens are paying the price, every day. And while I have belatedly been forced to share some of the experiences of our poor, uninsured, and unemployed, my situation doesn't even start to compare with people with no resources, no voice, nowhere to go and no one who listens to them. For those citizens we have something that's called the Government; a government that is supposed to look out for the people who can't look out for themselves, but instead focuses on "pay to play money." Today's system is built on greed. Greed is defined as an excessive desire to acquire or possess more than someone needs or deserves. Greed is not a corporate executive who builds an organization such as Microsoft, creates a lot of jobs, and happens to get rich. Greed is to become CEO for a drug company such as Pfizer, be responsible for a stock price drop of 40% over his five year tenure, twice as much as the AMEX Pharmaceutical Index, secure a $80 million retirement package while firing 16,385 Pharmacia and Pfizer employees, and get a 72% pay increase to $16.6 million as his reward. According to the New York Times average worker pay has remained flat since 1990 at around $27,000, after adjusting for inflation, while CEO compensation has quadrupled, from $2.82 million to $11.8 million. Our CEO's are in a position in which they can basically use public companies as personal piggy banks. And this is perfectly legal as long as they get someone else to sign their check. Meanwhile, the federal minimum wage has remained at $5.15 an hour since September 1, 1997. In fact, after adjusting for inflation, the value of the minimum wage is at its second lowest level since 1955. At the same time, the pharmaceutical industry spends over $100 million on lobbying activities to stop lower drug prices, according to the Center for Public Integrity. There are 1,274 registered pharmaceutical lobbyists in Washington, D.C. and during the 2004 election cycle, the drug industry contributed $1 million to President Bush. For an industry that makes $500 billion on a global basis, spending one million on a president or $100 million on lobbying is pocket change. This money was well spent. It stopped legalized import of cheaper drugs and instead we got a new Medicare drug program. This $720 billion law includes $139 billion in profits to drug manufactures and $46 billion in subsidies to HMOs and private insurance plans. The program has been such a disaster for our poor that at least twenty-four states have enacted emergency measures to ensure access to medications in the last couple of weeks . That's what a million dollars buys in Washington. So how could this happen? The answer is simple. The American democracy has been stolen by our new class of Robber Barons--the CEO's of our big corporations. A political system dependent on charity from rich men in hand-tailored suits with $100 million retirement packages is no democracy. It is a kleptocracy. It is not what our founding fathers envisioned. But we have the power to change this; to free our corporations from sticky-fingered CEO's, to free our elected representatives from "pay to play money" and to free our people from all these tyrants. We have the power to be free, at last. Can we change this? Can we build a new future? I believe that we can. I believe this because we live in a country that could rid itself of slavery, a country that finally allowed women to vote; a country that has come a long way in the short time since the civil rights movement began. But early on, each of those incredible changes was fiercely opposed by those in power, and none took place without great sacrifice. To free our corporations from sticky-fingered CEOs, to free our elected representatives from "pay to play money," and to free our people from these tyrants is going to take sacrifice and time. Perhaps a long, long time. In short, it will require a second American revolution. And I believe that one day it will happen. [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed] 5:26:36 PM    comment []

Eric Alterman: Government Gone Crazy, Continued. While George Bush and company were out invading countries that did not threaten us in any way, wasting trillions, killing tens of thousands, destroying functioning infrastructure, torturing innocents, inspiring hatred, and portraying America as a nation of incompetent, lying, torturing, illegal phone-tapping hypocrites to the entire world, what else was happening? Oh yeah, he was AWOL on taking the steps needed to prevent a nuclear 9/11. This is not some crazy commie leftist latte-drinking thing, it's a new study from the Council on Foreign Relations whose new report, Preventing Catastrophic Nuclear Terrorism, notices, "while the 'threat of a nuclear attack by terrorists has never been greater, the U.S. government has yet to make prevention the highest priority.'" Council Fellow for Science and Technology Charles D. Ferguson writes: "Securing and eliminating vulnerable nuclear materials and weapons offer points of greatest leverage in preventing nuclear terrorism," says the report. "For these activities, much more national and international action is urgently needed to address the problems of Pakistan's highly enriched uranium [HEU] and nuclear arsenal; Russia's highly enriched uranium; highly enriched uranium at more than one hundred civilian facilities in dozens of countries; and tactical nuclear weapons." "The biggest impediment to reducing the threat of nuclear terrorism involving Pakistan is President Musharraf's expressed belief that terrorists cannot make nuclear weapons," says Ferguson. The United States should try to "convince [President Musharraf and Pakistani leaders] that certain terrorist groups can build crude, but devastating, nuclear weapons if these groups have access to enough highly enriched uranium." "Securing Russian weapons-usable nuclear materials is vitally important but not adequate," says the report. A recently released Council-sponsored, Independent Task Force report on U.S. policy toward Russia underscores this point: "The United States must expand its cooperation with Russia to keep the most dangerous international actors from acquiring the most dangerous weapons, technologies, and materials. This is a fundamental American security interest--one that is far easier to protect if Washington and Moscow work together and far harder if they do not." The report identifies areas where efforts have fallen short in securing and eliminating nuclear weapons and weapons-usable nuclear materials, and offers recommendations to plug these gaps: "To help dissuade transfers of nuclear weapons from 'rogue' leaders to terrorist groups, the United States should clearly articulate a declaratory policy that it reserves the right to respond with the strongest measures including removal of those leaders from power." The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which inspects nuclear facilities to detect diversion of weapons-usable nuclear materials, is underfunded and understaffed. The report recommends doubling the $15.5 million that the IAEA has budgeted for its nuclear security fund and says "the member states should give the IAEA the authority it requires to expand its nuclear security assistance and inspection activities." The Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI) aims to convert HEU-fueled civilian reactors and remove HEU stored at poorly protected civilian facilities, but it has lagged behind schedule. "The United States, Russia, the IAEA, and their partners within the GTRI should expand the scope of the GTRI to include all currently operating HEU-fueled civilian reactors." "The United States should announce an unambiguous policy that it supports delegitimizing the use of highly enriched uranium in the civilian sector." The United States should "offer security assistance [to Pakistan] that includes generic physical security procedures, unclassified military handbooks, portal control equipment, sophisticated vaults and access doors, and personnel reliability programs." "The United States should reach agreement with Russia to accelerate and expand the successful Megatons-to-Megawatts Agreement," which converts weapons-grade HEU to a non-weapons-usable, low enriched form for nuclear reactor fuel. The United States should extend the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) agreement, which is set to expire in June 2006. The CTR agreement helps to secure Russian nuclear materials and dismantle Russian decommissioned ballistic missiles, submarines, land-based missile systems, and chemical weapons. More here. Read it and weep. 'How would I know?" section. Bloggers and pundits pretend to know a great deal that they don't really. We're fighting back... Israeli election.  I've spent a lot of time in Israel, I know a bunch of people there.  I've read a few books, too.  But what does the election mean for the peace process?  Who knows?  Why don't we just wait and find out... Immigration.  About twelve years ago, I got Rolling Stone to send me to San Diego to ride around with the Border Patrol for a week and chase illegal immigrants trying to sneak across the border.  I could probably spin that into a column about today's hot-button topic, but I don't feel like it.  We can't close the border and we need those people.  But we can't let everybody in or punish law abiding people.  What to do?  Hell if I know. Bolten for Card.  What's the difference?  Again, do these people talk to me?  And the people they do talk to, do they ever tell the truth to anyone about anything? New Iraqi Prime Minister.  Bush doesn't like the new Iraqi Prime Minister?  That's easy.  He's my guy.  It's not that I like him, whoever he is, or even that I hate Bush; I just play the averages. Fed raises rate again.  Yeah, like anybody knows...  I'm sure the punditocracy has recognized, by now, the folly of trying to predict the future of the economy. Speaking of which, I don't think we've paid enough attention to this from FAIR, and all the fodder it offers for the case that our punditocracy is run by liberal elitists (and people who know anything about anything...) Here's just a sampling brought to you care of your So-Called Liberal Media: "The only people who think this wasn't a victory are Upper Westside liberals, and a few people here in Washington." (Charles Krauthammer, Inside Washington, WUSA-TV, 4/19/03) "We're all neo-cons now." (MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03) "The war was the hard part.  The hard part was putting together a coalition, getting 300,000 troops over there and all their equipment and winning. And it gets easier.  I mean, setting up a democracy is hard, but it is not as hard as winning a war." (Fox News Channel's Fred Barnes, 4/10/03) "It was reminiscent, I think, of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  And just sort of that pure emotional expression, not choreographed, not stage-managed, the way so many things these days seem to be. Really breathtaking." (Washington Post reporter Ceci Connolly, appearing on Fox News Channel on 4/9/03, discussing the pulling down of a Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad, an event later revealed to have been a U.S. military PSYOPS operation--Los Angeles Times, 7/3/04) "We're proud of our president.  Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like Clinton or even like Dukakis or Mondale, all those guys, McGovern.  They want a guy who's president.  Women like a guy who's president.  Check it out.  The women like this war.  I think we like having a hero as our president.  It's simple.  We're not like the Brits." (MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 5/1/03) "He looked like an alternatively commander-in-chief, rock star, movie star, and one of the guys." (CNN's Lou Dobbs, on Bush's 'Mission Accomplished' speech, 5/1/03) "Why don't the damn Democrats give the president his day?  He won today.  He did well today." (MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03) "What's he going to talk about a year from now, the fact that the war went too well and it's over?  I mean, don't these things sort of lose their--Isn't there a fresh date on some of these debate points?" (MSNBC's Chris Matthews, speaking about Howard Dean--4/9/03) "Now that the war in Iraq is all but over, should the people in Hollywood who opposed the president admit they were wrong?" (Fox News Channel's Alan Colmes, 4/25/03) "I doubt that the journalists at the New York Times and NPR or at ABC or at CNN are going to ever admit just how wrong their negative pronouncements were over the past four weeks." (MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/9/03) "I'm waiting to hear the words 'I was wrong' from some of the world's most elite journalists, politicians and Hollywood types.... I just wonder, who's going to be the first elitist to show the character to say: 'Hey, America, guess what? I was wrong'? Maybe the White House will get an apology, first, from the New York Times' Maureen Dowd. Now, Ms. Dowd mocked the morality of this war. ... "Do you all remember Scott Ritter, you know, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector who played chief stooge for Saddam Hussein? Well, Mr. Ritter actually told a French radio network that -- quote, 'The United States is going to leave Baghdad with its tail between its legs, defeated.' Sorry, Scott. I think you've been chasing the wrong tail, again. "Maybe disgraced commentators and politicians alike, like Daschle, Jimmy Carter, Dennis Kucinich, and all those others, will step forward tonight and show the content of their character by simply admitting what we know already: that their wartime predictions were arrogant, they were misguided and they were dead wrong. Maybe, just maybe, these self-anointed critics will learn from their mistakes. But I doubt it. After all, we don't call them 'elitists' for nothing." (MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/10/03) "This has been a tough war for commentators on the American left. To hope for defeat meant cheering for Saddam Hussein. To hope for victory meant cheering for President Bush. The toppling of Mr. Hussein, or at least a statue of him, has made their arguments even harder to defend. Liberal writers for ideologically driven magazines like The Nation and for less overtly political ones like The New Yorker did not predict a defeat, but the terrible consequences many warned of have not happened. Now liberal commentators must address the victory at hand and confront an ascendant conservative juggernaut that asserts United States might can set the world right." (New York Times reporter David Carr, 4/16/03) "Well, the hot story of the week is victory.... The Tommy Franks-Don Rumsfeld battle plan, war plan, worked brilliantly, a three-week war with mercifully few American deaths or Iraqi civilian deaths.... There is a lot of work yet to do, but all the naysayers have been humiliated so far.... The final word on this is, hooray." (Fox News Channel's Morton Kondracke, 4/12/03) "Some journalists, in my judgment, just can't stand success, especially a few liberal columnists and newspapers and a few Arab reporters." (CNN's Lou Dobbs, 4/14/03) "This will be no war -- there will be a fairly brief and ruthless military intervention.... The president will give an order. [The attack] will be rapid, accurate and dazzling.... It will be greeted by the majority of the Iraqi people as an emancipation. And I say, bring it on." (Christopher Hitchens, in a 1/28/03 debate-- cited in the Observer, 3/30/03) "I will bet you the best dinner in the gaslight district of San Diego that military action will not last more than a week. Are you willing to take that wager?" (Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 1/29/03) "It won't take weeks. You know that, professor. Our military machine will crush Iraq in a matter of days and there's no question that it will." (Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 2/10/03) Straight-talk from the Maverick McCain, continued here. What Liberal Media? continued here: "The Bush White House already is known for its discipline and managerial skill." (In a news story.) Conde Nast has killed its shopping "magazine," Cargo, that contained no journalism, just advertorials, written by the staff, to promote advertisers' products. I don't think they did it for journalistic reasons, but still, the business is in such bad shape, I'll take my good news where I can find it. These "magazines" are a stain on the name of this profession. [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed] 5:14:00 PM    comment []

Davis Sweet: Keep Your Laws off My Body, Too. I'm coming out of a little bit of a closet, here (don't tell my wife): I have Multiple Sclerosis. Not the telethon thing (that's Muscular Dystrophy) or the bike-a-thon thing (which I think is cancer) but one of the walk-a-thon things where you get the wheelchairs and arm crutches tooling down the highway for a quarter a mile. So abortion is, naturally, my pet issue. Bob Burnett asks why men don't write about abortion. I think we do, but, lacking wombs and associated equipment, not so much from the defending-our-bodies standpoint as we probably should. So here's my banner: Keep your laws off my body, too! See, the anti-abortion extremists who, thanks to the Supreme Court, run the country -- and, thanks to the Supreme Court again, the Supreme Court as well -- want domain over my central nervous system. As a punishment for sin. Really. In their twisted outlook, any cell created by slapping the male and female procreative mechanisms together is a person. (Yeah, yeah, "Every Sperm is Sacred," I know, but we're not talking about just Catholics here.) Therefore, as the Good Book tells us, that microscopic seed is (intelligently) designed to cause its carrier blinding pain as eternal payment for that wicked Eve wanting to understand, well, anything. Apparently, Eve must have also had Multiple Sclerosis, because I too am paying in pain for her peek into that damned "tree of knowing-stuff." We can't look at what appears to be the best hope for fixing my pain -- stem cells -- because that would mean cheating some just-impregnated woman out of her chance to experience the miracle of epidural anesthesia. (Which, come on, must be another sin, right? It's in the book, people! Pain is the whole point! Anesthesia is the devil's workshop! Get Tom Cruise on the phone!) Stem cells are, essentially, liberals. Open-minded, cooperative, helpful. Show them a cluster of damaged nerve sheaths that erroneously tell my brain that all my skin from the waist down is on fire, for example, and they say, "How can I get in there and fix it?" But this budding Americorps has been co-opted by the religious end of the right-wing world into a selfish little conservative. Stick to your own tribe, fulfill your preacher's version of your divine mission, and for Christ's sake don't get involved in helping anybody. "I got mine; screw everybody else." We don't have the technology to do the thousands of microscopic surgeries it'd take to repair Montel Williams's MS or Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's or my friend Andy's spinal cord injury or my dad's diabetes. Stem cells are that technology. Only we can't get them because they're earmarked for biblical purposes. Here's a radical idea: how about we separate the church from the state for real? Actually divorce the decisions about laws and government funding from Monsignor Megachurch's veto pulpit? Oh, wait. I was thinking of the mythical America we learned about in school. The "liberty and justice for all" one. Not George Bush's evangelical punishment machine. As long as churches craft and determine our laws -- which is to say "as long as Republicans run the place" -- I'll be in pain. Searing, physical pain, not just the psychic pain that comes from seeing the word "Liberty" on all the quarters minted by the government that runs the Guantanamo prison camp. I'm not sure how that benefits anybody, least of all me, but it's the case. If you get a chance, and I think there's one coming up, do me a favor and vote these cruel idiots out. Strip away their gavels that beat up -- and beat down -- millions of Americans every day. Put this technological marvel of a country back in the "do good things for Americans" business. Let the research lead where it leads, not just where some guy's scriptural interpretation decides it should lead. Keep your scriptures; that's your right. Just keep them away from my country's laws. [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed] 12:49:47 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2006 Patricia Thurston.