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Op-Ed Columnist: The Phantom Menace

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Nov. 23 (Opinion) - The scare stories from Wall Street seem to be intimidating Washington from doing more to rescue the economy.

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The real reason Obama is not making much progress

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Independent - By Johann Hari - Nov. 20 (Opinion) - So far, Obama has tried to co-opt the corporations into his agenda by ensuring they will profit from any changes, but this inevitably waters down the proposals, often to the point of uselessness. The Cap and Trade legislation before Congress, for example, will barely limit carbon emissions at all because it has been gutted to please the polluters.

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Whose Team Is It, Anyway?

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Nation - By Katha Pollitt - Nov. 20 (Opinion) - Pro-choice voters have been taking one for the team for too long now. Enough already.

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Seniors skeptical of health overhaul

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Times - By Kyung M. Song - Nov. 17 (Special Report) - For seniors opposed to an overhaul, much of the fear stems from well-publicized news reports of massive Medicare cuts over a decade. The House bill calls for nearly $500 billion in spending cuts that are designed to keep Medicare solvent longer by reducing fraud, waste and excessive spending. Half the cuts would be to what experts call excessive payments to home-health, skilled-nursing and other institutional health providers.

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Report: More Americans going hungry

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Amy Goldstein - Nov. 17 (News Report) - The number of Americans who lack dependable access to adequate food shot up last year to 49 million, the largest number since the government has been keeping track, according to a government report released Monday that shows particularly steep increases in food scarcity among families with children.

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Yes, Sarah, There is a Media Conspiracy

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

True/Slant - By Matt Taibbi - Nov. 23 (Opinion) - Is the media out to get Sarah Palin? It seems like most of the letters I get are insisting that I admit it. “Surely you can’t deny,” writes one woman from Florida, “that no political figure in American history has had to put up with what Sarah Palin has had to put up with from the mainstream media.” Now, this is the part of this red-blue schtick where I’m supposed to strike back without thinking and re-hash the history of, say, the Monica Lewinsky scandal in rebuttal and then, as the argument progresses, do the whole “I know you are but what am I?” thing until the end of time. I’ve decided from now on that I’m just not going to go there with any of this culture-war bullshit. It’s exhausting. I mean, hell, if you want to argue over who’s more justified in wallowing in media victimhood, that’s not a fight I mind losing. Mazel tov!

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Dislocated in America

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

St. Louis Post-Dispatch - Nov. 21 (Editorial) - What may be occurring is a seismic shift in the American economy, one that could leave as many as one in four Americans permanently unemployed or so drastically underemployed that he or she can’t make ends meet. That’s the situation today. The greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression has resulted in the greatest social dislocation since the Great Depression.

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Chamber’s Donohue Keeps Cash Coming After PG&E, Apple Defect

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Bloomberg - By Mark Drajem, Daniel Whitten - Nov. 17 (News Report) - Apple Inc. and three other members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce quit over its opposition to climate-change legislation. President Barack Obama denounced the group for “spending millions” to kill a planned consumer financial-protection agency. Tom Donohue, the 71-year-old president of the nation’s largest business-lobbying organization, responded by doing what critics and admirers alike say he does best: using a fight to raise money in support of the Chamber’s agenda.

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Obama Nominates Pesticide Executive to Be Chief Agricultural Negotiator in the Office of the US Trade Representative

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, Amy Goodman - Nov. 17 (Interview) - President Obama’s nominee for the Chief Agricultural Negotiator in the office of the US Trade Representative, Islam Siddiqui is currently a vice president at CropLife America, a coalition of the major industrial players in the pesticide industry, including Syngenta, Monsanto, and Dow Chemical.

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Florida coalition targets pending federal pollution rules

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Miami Herald - By Curtis Morgan - Nov. 23 (News Report) - The target: A settlement a federal judge in Tallahassee approved last week in a lawsuit brought by five environmental groups against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It requires that federal regulators, for the first time, step in and set a state's water quality standards for nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus that flow into waterways from fertilized lawns, sewage plants, farms fields, cattle pastures and a host of other sources.

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Scenes from Iowa's recession

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Des Moines Register - By Michael Bugeja - Nov. 23 (Special Report) - They arrive at Gray's Lake Park in the morning, basking on borrowed time of a mild mid-November, realizing the winter can arrive any day like layoffs without warning. They are the unemployed, strolling with friends, partners or retirees, or sometimes alone. Everyone has a story to tell. Everyone knows someone else out of work in what some call "The Second Depression." They are neighbors, acquaintances, family members, colleagues, friends. They may be you. They belong to "The New Poverty," people who followed the rules, paid bills and mortgages on time and whose lives were scuttled by Ponzi and subprime schemes happening far away.

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Bio-fuel growth raises concerns about forests

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Times - By John Flesher - Nov. 23 (News Report) - Forests are a treasure trove of limbs and bark that can be made into alternative fuels and some worry the increasing trend of using that logging debris will make those materials too scarce, harming the woodlands. For centuries, forests have provided

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Is It Time for Malpractice Reform?

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

American Prospect - By Joanne Kenen - Nov. 20 (News Analysis) - Year after year, Republicans try to pass legislation that would limit medical malpractice awards. Fix the tort system, they argue, and we fix rising health-care costs. And year after year, Democrats resist placing arbitrary caps on awards to people who may have suffered from an egregious medical error. The fight plays out like a predictable old Western -- good guys versus bad guys. Depending on your politics, the villain is either the greedy doctor or the greedy trial lawyer.

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As Afghans Resist Taliban, U.S. Spurs Rise of Militias

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Dexter Filkins - Nov. 22 (News Report) - “We are trying to reach out to these groups that have organized themselves,” Col. Christopher Kolenda said in Kabul. Special Forces soldiers have been fanning out across the countryside, descending from helicopters into valleys where the residents have taken up arms against the Taliban and offering their help. Afghan and American officials say they plan to use the militias as tripwires for Taliban incursions, enabling them to call the army or the police if things get out of hand.

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NAM Speaks Softly on Climate -- Does It Carry a Big Stick?

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Joel Kirkland - Nov. 17 (News Report) - The biggest U.S. manufacturers' alliance has gone from being a ferocious critic of global warming legislation to being a quiet observer in recent months, even as debate about Senate climate legislation increasingly focuses on global trade issues and jobs.

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U.S. Chamber of Commerce Split Over Donohue’s Climate Policy

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By John M. Broder - Nov. 19 (Special Report) - BACK in the 1990s when Thomas J. Donohue was president of the American Trucking Associations, a subordinate raised a question at a staff meeting. Some of the association’s members, the aide said, wondered whether it was really necessary for the group’s president to fly on a private jet.

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High stakes in Appalachia as greens battle Big Coal

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Toronto Star - By Mitch Potter - Nov. 17 (News Report) - The plan was painfully simple: save a mountain, turn a country, cool the Earth. And for the longest time, it seemed to be working here on Coal River Mountain, ground zero in the American debate over climate change.

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Fed under fire as public anger mounts

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Associated Press - By Tom Raum - Nov. 23 (News Analysis) - Suddenly the Federal Reserve is everybody's punching bag. Strip the Fed of its bank regulation powers, some in Congress are demanding. Get probing audits of its behind-the-scenes operations, others say. The chairman of the Federal Reserve Board is always fair game for criticism and second-guessing, usually over interest rate actions. But this year the criticism is much broader as Congress responds to widespread public anger that the Fed bailed out Wall Street but not ordinary Americans, and with unemployment in double digits.

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Senate to Put Off Climate Bill Until Spring

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Wall Street Journal - By Ian Talley - Nov. 18 (News Report) - Senate Democratic leaders said Tuesday they would put off debate on a big climate-change bill until spring, in a sign of weakening political will to tackle a long-term environmental issue at a time of high unemployment and economic uncertainty.

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Fed Beaten: Bill To Audit Federal Reserve Passes Key Hurdle

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By The Huffington Post News Team - Nov. 20 (News Report) - In an unprecedented defeat for the Federal Reserve, an amendment to audit the multi-trillion dollar institution was approved by the House Finance Committee with an...

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Advocacy Groups May Reshape Message During Holidays

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Katharine Q. Seeleye - Nov. 22 (News Analysis) - The Senate debate on health care, set to begin the week after Thanksgiving, is now on course to collide with the holiday season. One question for advocacy groups on all sides will be whether to keep up their barrage of pointed commercials, even as chestnuts roast and stockings are hung.

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The $100 Million Health Care Vote?

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

ABC News - By Jonathan Karl - Nov. 20 (News Report) - The health care bill includes a $100 million section for increasing medicaid subsidies to the state of Louisiana. The Note, authored by ABC News' Rick Klein, covers politics, the White House, Congress, Democrats, Republicans, and all latest political campaigning for the 2012 presidential race. Washington's first and most influential tipsheet, The

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Nidal Hasan Emails Could Indicate Fort Hood Shooting Was A Terrorist Plot

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Associated Press - By Pamela Hess, Anne Gearan - Nov. 21 (Breaking News) - WASHINGTON – The government intercepted at least 18 e-mails between the alleged Fort Hood gunman and a radical Muslim cleric, and a key senator says there could be more communications that might have tipped off law enforcement or military officials.

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In Senate, coal fuels climate deals

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Politico - By Lisa Lerer - Nov. 17 (News Report) - Forget the debate over green jobs, wind farms and solar power. In the Senate, all deals on climate change run through coal country. Black gold has maintained a tight hold over the climate bill — despite a damaging lobbying scandal this summer, growing public health concerns and a destructive toxic coal ash spill that smothered 300 acres in eastern Tennessee last December.

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Obama Aims to Allay Auto Lobby Concern on Korea Trade

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Bloomberg - By Edwin Chen, Julianna Goldman - Nov. 21 (News Report) - President Barack Obama said he is committed to pushing through a free trade agreement with South Korea that has been stalled by the U.S. auto lobby and unions, who argue it doesn’t do enough to open up Korean markets. Obama’s joint press conference in Seoul today with South Korean counterpart Lee Myung Bak was a last chance on his four- nation Asia trip to show he opposes protectionism. The accord has been held up in Congress, where lawmakers are demanding wider access for Chrysler Group LLC, Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co. Lee said today he is willing to reopen talks on the auto industry.

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