NewsTrust - For Review

Will ‘Astroturf’ Groups Block Net Neutrality Reform?

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

In These Times - By Megan Tady - Sep. 03 (Investigative Report) - Jim Hightower describes astroturf organizations as “the corporate version of grassroots…well-orchestrated PR efforts that put real folks out front, but are instigated, organized and funded by corporate interests and right-wing front groups.”

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Shilling on the Corporate Dollar

Sun, 31 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

In These Times - By Art Levine - May. 31 (Opinion) - Testifying before the Senate labor and health committee hearing in March, economist Anne Layne-Farrar of the corporate consulting firm LECG warned about the horrendous impact of the Employee Free Choice Act. Its potential to increase union membership from between five and 10 percent, she said, “would result in an increase in the unemployment of around one and a half to three percentage points. These are sizable effects for the U.S. economy.” Earnest and well-prepared, Layne-Farrar cited her study that concluded that 600,000 jobs would be lost in the first year after the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) became law. Fox “Fair and Balanced” News, naturally, in its TV report neglected to mention that her “research” was funded by the corporate-friendly, anti-union “Alliance to Save Main Street Jobs.”

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Key Dems Back Public Option

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

In These Times - By Editor - Apr. 01 (News Report) - If AHSA became law, it would create a federal health insurance system administered by the states. The insurance program would give patients an unlimited choice of doctors and hospitals because their insurance would cover them everywhere.

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Moving Forward Without Dogma

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

In These Times - By Ken Brociner - Jan. 25 (Opinion) - Despite the severity of the current economic crisis, the morale of the progressive movement remains sky high. Liberals, progressives and leftists worked their tails off to help elect Barack Obama—and this time we won! Hundreds of thousands of progressive activists worked directly with the Obama campaign, while similarly large numbers worked in parallel projects such as the all-out mobilization organized by the labor movement and MoveOn’s impressive grassroots campaign—to name two of the largest independent efforts. Less noticed has been the fact that over the last year most progressives approached politics in a principled and pragmatic manner. Third party-ism never threatened the progressive movement’s determination to rally behind Obama. Neither did another chronic problem on the American left—the temptation of political purists to sit on the sidelines as a presidential election hung in the balance because the Democratic nominee wasn’t progressive enough.

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How Obama Can Fix The Other Disaster in Bush's Legacy: The War on Workers

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

In These Times - By Art Levine - Jan. 05 (Comment) - On virtually every front, the Labor Department that was supposed to protect workers’ lives and paychecks did practically nothing to stop 6,000 workers from being killed on the job each year and prevent an estimated $19 billion from being stolen through corporate wage theft of overtime and minimum wage payments.

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Americans Unwilling to Face Reality

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

In These Times - By John R. MacArthur - Oct. 19 (Opinion) - It’s not as though no one saw it coming. Here’s the economist Michael Hudson, writing in the May 2006 issue of Harper’s magazine: “The reality is that, although home ownership may be a wise choice for many people, this particular real-estate bubble has been carefully engineered to lure home buyers into circumstances detrimental to their own best interests… . The bubble will burst, and when it does, the people who thought they would be living the easy life of a landlord will soon find that what they really signed up for was the hard servitude of debt serfdom.” Other commentators, including Warren Buffet, said similar things about the derivatives market. It was prescient stuff for anybody who cared to listen, but hardly anybody did. Americans, perhaps even more than other people, have difficulty embracing the concept of “reality.” In part, this is religious. America remains the land of infinite redemption where any crook can suddenly go straight. In part, it stems from our turbo-charged ethos of capitalism. America has always been the land of get-rich-quick and damn the consequences. We are a nation of fantasists, and things have to get really bad before a politician has the right to trade in hard truth.

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The $700 Billion Questions

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

In These Times - By David Sirota - Sep. 22 (Opinion) - Whether the bill passes or not, the drafting of it--even the mere thinking of it--is the single most clear sign that all of the major tenets of American democracy are on the auction block these days: from constitutional checks and balances, to legislative and judicial oversight to electoral accountability itself.

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Don't Tase Me, GOP

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

In These Times - By Jacob Wheeler - Aug. 05 (News Report) - The St. Paul Police Department is arming itself with Tasers. Local activists and media say that the department ordered 230 stun guns in late February -- adding to the 140 already in its possession -- in preparation for protests at the upcoming Republican National Convention (RNC), which St. Paul will host from Sept. 1 to Sept. 4. Police spokesman Tom Walsh denies any connection between the arrival of the Tasers and the upcoming RNC.

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The Dark Side of the Toyota Prius

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

In These Times - By Paul Abowd - Jul. 16 (News Report) - The report alleges that Toyota exploits guest workers, mostly shipped in from China and Vietnam. According to the NLC, these workers are "stripped of their passports and often forced to work -- including at subcontract plants supplying Toyota -- 16 hours a day, seven days a week, while being paid less than half the legal minimum wage." Workers are forced to live in company dormitories and deported for complaining about poor treatment, the report finds. Low-wage temporary workers make up one-third of Toyota's Prius assembly-line workers, mostly in the auto-parts supply chain. They are signed to contracts for periods as short as four months, and are paid only 60 percent of a full-time employee's wage. Parts plants run by subcontractors advertise standard, nine-hour, five-day-a-week jobs. But according to the NLC, "the typical shift was 15 to 16.5 hours a day, from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. or 1:00 a.m."

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China's Valley of Tears

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 09:38:24 -0800

In These Times - By Slavoj Zizek - Dec. 04 (Special Report) - Modern-day China is not an oriental-despotic distortion of capitalism, but rather the repetition of capitalism's development in Europe itself. In the early modern era, most European states were far from democratic. And if they were democratic (as was the case of the Netherlands during the 17th century), it was only a democracy of the propertied liberal elite, not of the workers.

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Examining the Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 12:19:35 -0700

In These Times - By Lindsay Beyerstein - Nov. 01 (Special Report) - Harman's bill would convene a 10-member national commission to study "violent radicalization" (defined as "the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change") and "homegrown terrorism" (defined as "the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual born, raised, or based and operating primarily within the United States [...] to intimidate or coerce the United States government, the civilian population of the United States, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives").

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Merc is the New Crack

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 14:21:12 -0700

In These Times - By Lindsay Beyerstein - Oct. 03 (Opinion) - Private security companies claim to support the U.S. military, but in fact, the interests of the two groups frequently conflict. Contractors answer to their clients, not to the generals on the ground, and certainly not to the public. Contractors are hired to protect the individuals who sign their checks--even if they undermine the overall counterinsurgency effort in the process.

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Whose Subsidy Is It Anyway?

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 07:48:46 -0700

In These Times - By David Moberg - Jun. 04 (Special Report) - Tally it up. Losers: farmers, farm laborers, food processing workers, rural communities, the environment, poor country peasants, many developing country agricultural industries, urban laborers in both developed and developing countries facing wage competition from rural migrants and U.S. taxpayers. The winner: corporate agribusiness.

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The Only Certain Guaranteed Way to Stop Bush & Cheney Is to Remove Them from Office, ASAP

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 09:17:29 -0800

In These Times - By Brian Zick - Jan. 11 (Opinion) - The call for impeachment must come from the public at large, not narrowly from Democrats. The reason for impeachment must be focused exclusively on the Bush/Cheney usurpation of authority in direct violation of the Constitution, to continue their war. That's the one salient reason the public can support by enormous and compelling majority, sufficient to persuade reelection-conscious Republicans, in order to gain the 2/3 vote needed for conviction.

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Stunning Revelations: The untold story of Taser-related deaths

Mon, 13 Nov 2006 17:39:19 -0800

In These Times - By Silja J.A. Talvi - Nov. 13 (Special Report) - TASER International Inc. maintains that its stun-guns are "changing the world and saving lives everyday." There is no question that they changed Jack Wilson's life. On Aug. 4, in Lafayette, Colo., policemen on a stakeout approached Jack's son Ryan as he entered a field of a dozen young marijuana plants. When Ryan took off running, officer John Harris pursued the 22-year-old for a half-mile and then shot him once with an X-26 Taser. Ryan fell to the ground and began to convulse. The officer attempted cardiopulmonary resuscitation, but Ryan died.

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Legislating Under the Influence

Mon, 10 Jul 2006 13:43:22 -0700

In These Times - By David Sirota - Jul. 10 (Special Report) - When I was hired to work on the U.S. House Appropriations Committee in 2001, I was told by many in Washington that the panel was one of last remaining places in Congress where things actually get done. By the time I left Capitol Hill some two and a half years later, I had learned what all Americans are now realizing: The panel certainly does get things done, but not for the people who elected its members. It gets things done almost exclusively for those lobbyists and corporate interests that buy influence through campaign contributions. The committee has become, in short, the breeding ground of congressional corruption.

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If Ken Lay Was Black…

Fri, 26 May 2006 20:43:05 -0700

In These Times - By Susan J. Douglas - May. 26 (News Analysis) - despite reports that the trial’s Houston courthouse is surrounded by media, it has received virtually no coverage. ... This is the current state and, without correction, the future of corporate America. This is why the most powerful media bias of all—the corporate bias—is so especially pernicious.

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