NewsTrust - Most Recent Stories

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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An End to the War on Weed?

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

In These Times - By Nathan Comp - Apr. 12 (Opinion) - As a medley of border violence, recessionary pressure, international criticism and popular acceptance steadily undermines America’s decades-long effort to eliminate drugs and drug use, the U.S. movement to legalize marijuana is gaining unprecedented momentum. Once derided and dismissed by lawmakers, law enforcers and the law-abiding alike, marijuana reform is sweeping the nation, although the federal government appears committed—at least for the time being—to largely maintaining the status quo.

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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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We Arm the World

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

In These Times - By Frida Berrigan - Jan. 04 (Special Report) - In 2007, U.S. foreign military sales agreements totaled more than $32 billion — nearly triple the amount during President Bush’s first full year in office. The Pentagon routinely justifies weapons sales as “promoting regional stability,” but many of these arms end up in the world’s war zones. In 2006 and 2007, the five biggest recipients of U.S. weapons were Pakistan ($3.5 billion), Iraq ($2.2 billion), Israel ($2.2 billion), Afghanistan ($1.9 billion) and Colombia ($580 million) — all countries where conflict rages.

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It’s not easy becoming green

Sat, 27 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

In These Times - By David Roberts - Dec. 27 (News Analysis) - Meeting the challenge of global climate change will involve an enormous amount of work — solarizing and retrofitting buildings for energy efficiency, manufacturing electric cars and parts for wind turbines, building public transit systems and smarter electrical grids, and much more. The next few decades will see the creation of millions of blue-collar jobs that serve to meliorate social and environmental ills — known as “green-collar” jobs. Jones argues that these jobs should be directed to those who have been most harmed by the “pollution-based economy” — such as ex-felons, recovering addicts, at-risk youth, the working poor, those who have seen their jobs outsourced, and people of color (who have disproportionately suffered from high rates of asthma, cancer and other ailments tied to environmental toxins).

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What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

In These Times - By Bill Ayers - Nov. 07 (Opinion) - Obama has continually been asked to defend something that ought to be at democracy’s heart: the importance of talking to as many people as possible in this complicated and wildly diverse society, of listening with the possibility of learning something new, and of speaking with the possibility of persuading or influencing others. The McCain-Palin attacks not only involved guilt by association, they also assumed that one must apply a political litmus test to begin a conversation.

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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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Why Soldiers Rape

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

In These Times - By Helen Benedict - Aug. 13 (Special Report) - the attention always focuses on the women: where they were when assaulted, their relations with the assailant, the effects on their mental health and careers, whether they are being adequately helped, and so on. That discussion, as valuable as it is, misses a fundamental point. To understand military sexual assault, let alone know how to stop it, we must focus on the perpetrators. We need to ask: Why do soldiers rape?

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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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McSexist: McCain's War on Women

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

In These Times - By Kate Sheppard - Jul. 24 (News Analysis) - Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) campaign and the media would have us believe that herds of disaffected women voters will be stampeding to the Republicans this year because a woman candidate won't be on the presidential ballot in November. McCain's campaign has been making a clear play for women voters in recent weeks, hosting conference calls with Republican women and touting that his policies on national security, the economy and healthcare appeal to women voters. But the suggestion that women -- and feminist women, at that -- will be lining up behind him is a fairytale. At least, it should be. McCain's record and policies on issues of importance to women are neither moderate nor maverick. In The Nation, Katha Pollitt put it simply: "[T]o vote for McCain, a feminist would have to be insane."

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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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Is the Fourth Estate a Fifth Column?

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

In These Times - By Bill Moyers - Jul. 11 (Opinion) - Sadly, in many respects, the Fourth Estate has become the fifth column of democracy, colluding with the powers that be in a culture of deception that subverts the thing most necessary to freedom, and that is the truth.

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Dismantling the Myth of McCain

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

In These Times - By David Moberg - Jun. 19 (Opinion) - McCain's strength stems from his media-fostered image as a straight-talking maverick reformer and former prisoner of war.

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Killer Credit

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

In These Times - By Adam Doster - Jan. 29 (Special Report) - Like mortgages, credit card debt is often carved up and sold on global debt markets as securities. Since borrowers generally pay back what they owe, that debt has been profitable and safe for traders, which explains the $40 billion increase in securitized credit card debt from September 2005 to 2006. ... These developments are problematic because credit card debt is unsecured, meaning no portion of defaults can be salvaged. Yet broader dangers lurk on a macro scale. If those bundled securities of debt decline in value, as mortgage-backed securities did last summer, banks and institutional investors (pensions, mutual funds, hedge funds) could all take a major hit, which could cause comparable damage to the broader economy.

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Empires Architecture

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

In These Times - By Allen McDuffee - Jan. 02 (News Report) - Panic shot through the State Department and White House earlier this summer when the American architecture firm Berger Devine Yaeger posted computer-generated images and layout of the forthcoming U.S. embassy in Baghdad on its website. Ostensibly concerned with security, government officials urgently acted to remove graphics to avoid aiding potential insurgents in their plots to disrupt the embassy's progress. The real fear, however, may have been that the disclosure would draw public and congressional attention to everything that's gone wrong with the embassy.

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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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Training Satellites on the United States

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 10:02:52 -0700

In These Times - By Lindsay Beyerstein - Sep. 20 (Special Report) - nitially, the National Applications Office (NAO), a newly created office within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), will confine itself to homeland security and traditional civil applications. Officials will be able to request satellite data to enhance border security, defend critical infrastructure and coordinate disaster response. Next year, the department plans to give satellite data to state and local law enforcement agencies.

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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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Duck and Cover

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 16:02:25 -0700

In These Times - By William D. Hartung, Frida Berrigan - Apr. 30 (News Analysis) - While the United States demands that other countries end their nuclear programs, the Bush administration is busy planning a new generation of nuclear weapons. Nearly 20 years after the Berlin Wall crumbled, the United States is allocating more funding, on average, to nuclear weapons than during the Cold War. The Bush administration is pumping this money--more than $6 billion this year--into renovating the nuclear weapons complex and designing new nuclear weapons. Such hypocrisy is one of the main obstacles to nuclear arms reductions because it runs the risk of shattering the 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in which the nuclear-armed states pledged to begin the process of disarmament if the non-nuclear states opted not to pursue the deadly technology.

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