"Laurence Lewis" - Democrats Are Ceding the Entire Traditional Democratic Economic Ideology

Published on Sunday, March 6, 2011 by DailyKos

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/06/952834/-DC-Democrats-are-ceding-the-entire-traditional-Democratic-economic-ideology

by Laurence Lewis

On Thursday, we got this news:

President Obama on Wednesday intervened in a partisan brawl that threatens to shut down the government, inviting congressional leaders of both parties to sit down with Vice President Biden and work out a compromise to fund federal programs through the end of the fiscal year.

The official statement called for a "bipartisan" approach. There seems to be a presumption that no one has been paying attention the past couple years, because the only people that still believe in bipartisanship are also likely the holdouts on Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. The way it actually works is that every time the word is mentioned, Democrats give ground on core principles while Republicans have to accept that they get only some, but not all, of what they want. The administration's framing of its role also is interesting. Republican administrations tend to think of themselves as partisan, representing the core values of their party. This administration seems to think of itself as a mediator between partisans. Triangulation you can believe in.

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"Suzanne Goldenberg" - Republicans Attack Obama's Environmental Protection From All Sides

Published on Friday, March 4, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/04/republicans-attack-obamas-environmental-protection

Environmental protection in US under attack from extremist Tea Partiers backed by big business

by Suzanne Goldenberg

It started on a sultry day in Houston when hundreds of protesters, mostly oil company employees, were bussed to a concert hall in their lunch hour to rally against a historic first step by Congress to reduce the pollution that causes climate change.

The event marked the start of a backlash by wealthy industry owners and conservative activists against Barack Obama's green agenda. Now it has snowballed into what green campaigners say is the greatest assault on environmental protection that America has ever seen.

Eighteen months after that Houston rally, the green agenda is under assault on multiple fronts, from cutbacks in recycling in Wisconsin to the loosening of regulations governing coal mining in West Virginia and a challenge to the authority of the White House and federal government to act on climate change.

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"Mark Potok" - Number of Radical Right-Wing Hate, Patriot, and Militia Groups Exploded in 2010

By Mark Potok, SPLC Intelligence Report
Posted on February 28, 2011, Printed on March 6, 2011
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report

For the second year in a row, the radical right in America expanded explosively in 2010, driven by resentment over the changing racial demographics of the country, frustration over the government’s handling of the economy, and the mainstreaming of conspiracy theories and other demonizing propaganda aimed at various minorities. For many on the radical right, anger is focusing on President Obama, who is seen as embodying everything that’s wrong with the country.

Hate groups topped 1,000 for the first time since the Southern Poverty Law Center began counting such groups in the 1980s. Anti-immigrant vigilante groups, despite having some of the political wind taken out of their sails by the adoption of hard-line anti-immigration laws around the country, continued to rise slowly. But by far the most dramatic growth came in the antigovernment “Patriot” movement — conspiracy-minded organizations that see the federal government as their primary enemy — which gained more than 300 new groups, a jump of over 60%.

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"David Swanson" - Manchurian Senators

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Manchurian-Senators-by-David-Swanson-110306-395.html

March 6, 2011

By David Swanson

People are doing journalism and the Washington Post is pissed. How to respond? Apparently the answer arrived at by Post editors is to just give up on any Americans who have been informing themselves and target those Americans who believe anything that super important people say. How else to explain an op-ed full of documented lies and published last Friday over the byline of two Democratic senators, Carl Levin and Jack Reed?

The headline was "The Surge Afghanistan Still Needs." Surge is not code for food or peace or environmental restoration or a moment's relief from the attentions of the world's oil, gas, and power addicts. Surge, in ignorant-American-newspaper-readerspeak is a term denoting the comical pretense that a criminal and genocidal invasion and occupation can be redeemed by escalating it. The term was coined in reference to Iraq, that hell on earth where pro-democracy demonstrators are now being murdered by the government that 20 years of war and sanctions built, even as that government demands reparations payments for recent US destruction.

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Bernie Sanders Calls for Surtax on Billionaires, End to Breaks for Big Oil

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Sanders-Revenue-Must-Matc-by-Bernie-Sanders-110306-338.html

March 6, 2011

By Bernie Sanders

BURLINGON, Vt., March 6 -- As the U.S. Senate heads for votes this week on competing spending plans for the rest of the year, Sen. Bernie Sanders said Congress also must raise additional revenue to reduce deficits.  He proposed a surtax on millionaires and eliminating tax breaks for Big Oil.

While there is widespread agreement on the need to reduce the $14 national debt and $1.6 trillion deficit, Sanders (I-Vt.) said "this must include not only budget cuts, but raising revenue in a fair and economically just way."

Sanders, a member of the Senate Budget Committee, also said, "It would be morally wrong for the United States to balance the budget on the backs of the most vulnerable people in our society while asking nothing from the wealthiest."

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"Tom Engelhardt" - Fools at the Pump

Published on Friday, March 4, 2011 by TomDispatch.com

http://www.tomdispatch.com/

Do Our Leaders Ever Fill Their Gas Tanks Themselves?

by Tom Engelhardt

The price of gas at the pump is now averaging $3.65 a gallon in California and has already edged up to $4 in San Francisco and Chicago.  Nationwide, it’s at $3.38, a 20-cent rise in the last week (six cents last Friday alone).  Meanwhile, in testimony before the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke spoke optimistically of the economy and dismissed the impact of soaring oil prices, spurred by turmoil in the Middle East.  “The most likely outcome,” he said, “is that the recent rise in commodity prices will lead to, at most, a temporary and relatively modest increase in U.S. consumer price inflation.” 

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"Paul Craig Roberts" - More Jobs Mirage

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/More-Jobs-Mirage-by-paul-craig-roberts-110305-914.htm

March 5, 2011

By paul craig roberts

The announcement on March 4 that 192,000 new jobs were created in February was greeted with a sigh of relief. But the number is just more smoke and mirrors, as I will show shortly. First, let's pretend the jobs are real. What areas of the economy produced the jobs?

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 152,000 of the jobs or 79% are in private services, consisting of: 11,700 jobs in wholesale trade, 22,000 in transportation and warehousing, 36,400 in administration and waste services (of which 15,500 are temporary help services), and 36,200 in ambulatory health care services and nursing and residential care facilities. Entertainment, waitresses and bartenders accounted for 20,000. Repair and maintenance, laundry services, and membership associations accounted for 14,000.

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Les Leopold" - Main Street Goes to War Against Itself as Job Crisis Persists

Published on Friday, March 4, 2011 by Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/les-leopold/main-street-goes-to-war-a_b_831242.html

by Les Leopold

The February unemployment rate is 8.9 percent. The broader Bureau of Labor Statistics U6 jobless rate is 15.9 percent. The report shows a net increase of 192,000 jobs. However, we need 127,000 new jobs every month to keep up with population growth. At this rate it will take 11.2 years to get back to full employment.

A Wall Street billionaire, a unionized public employee, and a Tea Party member are sitting at a table eying a plate of a dozen delicious cookies. The financier reaches across and takes 11 cookies, looks at the tea partier and says, "Watch out for that union guy. He wants your cookie."

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"Ray McGovern" - Pvt Manning -- Is Army Aping Mafia?

Published on Saturday, March 5, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/05-2

 
by Ray McGovern

Is the U.S. Army acting like the Mafia in seeking to imprison 23-year-old Private Bradley Manning for the rest of his life? Is the primary aim of the abuse being dished out to Manning that of deterring other U.S. soldiers who might be tempted to put conscience, compassion, and commitment to truth ahead of going by the book regarding classification restrictions?

If the Mafia comparison strikes you as a tad over the top, perhaps a seven-year trip down memory lane may prove instructive. Remember what happened after the U.S. Army learned of the obscene and brutal treatment of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in early 2004?

Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba led the first (and only honest) investigation of the scandal. In May 2004, he completed a report that sharply criticized the Army and the higher-ups in the Bush administration for creating the conditions that permitted the mistreatment to occur.

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"Paul Fassa" - Strategies needed to resist GMOs successfully

by Paul Fassa

Natural News, March 6, 2011

http://www.naturalnews.com/031599_GMO_resistance.html

(NaturalNews) Many of us have come to realize that petitions to stall Monsanto`s march to world food domination are ineffective. It doesn`t matter whether the petitions go to any of the alphabet soup government agencies, Congress, or the White House. They are ultimately simply ignored. Why? Because they`re all in on it. Monsanto has key personnel in the USDA and FDA, installed by the president himself.

So what can be done? There are other strategies. But these strategies to save our food supply from ultimate ruin need to be coordinated by an international non-government organization (NGO) that currently does not exist.

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