NewsTrust - All Rated Stories

Dick Gephardt's Spectacular Sellout

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Sebastian Jones - Oct. 03 (Special Report) - In March, months after the government gave an unprecedented $85 billion to AIG, the insurance giant released a list of counterparties, exposing some of the world's top financial institutions as the real recipients of the bailout. First among its peers, Goldman Sachs got a whopping $12.9 billion, despite having claimed in September to be insulated from AIG's troubles. Based on these revelations, Maryland Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings, who had dogged the financial industry since the crisis began, told his staff to prepare a letter calling for an investigation.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.2 average - 5 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Meet the Afghan Army

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Ann Jones - Sep. 24 (Special Report) - Afghans do not think or act like Americans. Yet Americans in power refuse to grasp that inconvenient point.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.2 average - 5 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Why Is Obama Still Using Blackwater?

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Jeremy Scahill - Sep. 16 (Investigative Report) - Ridgeway, the Blackwater operative, admitted that he and the other Blackwater operatives "opened fire with automatic weapons and grenade launchers on unarmed civilians." None of the victims that day "was an insurgent," he said, adding that "many were shot while inside of civilian vehicles that were attempting to flee."

NewsTrust Rating: 4.1 average - 7 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Working Without Laws

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Annette Bernhardt, Ruth Milkman, Nik Theodore - Sep. 07 (Special Report) - For the past thirty years, the gospel of lean and mean has reordered the world of work, setting off a race to the bottom in which employers circumvent and evade standards that once seemed inviolate. That race has now taken us to a logical low point: many employers are ignoring workplace laws altogether.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.0 average - 7 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Flushing Blackwater

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

TruthOut - By Jeremy Scahill - Sep. 03 (News) - In addition, Blackwater is being investigated by the Justice Department for possible crimes ranging from weapons smuggling to manslaughter and by the IRS for possible tax evasion. It is being sued in federal courts by scores of Iraqi civilians for alleged war crimes and extrajudicial killings. Two of its men have pleaded guilty to weapons-smuggling charges; another pleaded guilty to the unprovoked manslaughter of an Iraqi civilian, and five others have been indicted on similar counts. The US military is investigating Blackwater's killing of civilians in Afghanistan in May, and reports are emerging that the company may be implicated in the CIA's extraordinary rendition program.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.4 average - 8 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Joe Scarborough Is Shocked, Yet Awed by Single-Payer Logic

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By 9 Leslie Savan - Aug. 21 (News) - Something rather remarkable happened on Tuesday's Morning Joe. Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York pointed out that the health insurance industry has no clothes, and Joe Scarborough, after first trying to spin it some gossamer threads, broke down and said, By God, you're right, this emperor is a naked money-making machine

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average - 13 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Blackwater Founder Implicated in Murder

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Jeremy Scahill - Aug. 04 (News) - Sworn statements filed in Federal Court allege that Blackwater founder Erik Prince launched a "crusade" to eliminate Muslims and Islam and that the company may have been involved in murders to suppress information from federal investigators.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.4 average - 9 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Unpopular Science

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Chris Mooney, Sheril Kirshenbaum - Aug. 04 (Special Report) - We live in a time of pathbreaking advances in biotechnology and nanotechnology, of private spaceflight and personalized medicine, amid a climate and energy crisis, in a world made more dangerous by biological and nuclear terror threats and global pandemics. Meanwhile, advances in neuroscience are calling into question who we are, whether our identities and thought processes can be reduced to purely physical phenomena, whether we actually have free will. The media ought to be bursting with this stuff. Yet precisely the opposite is happening: even in places where you'd expect it to hold out the longest, science journalism is declining.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.8 average - 6 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Blackwater Seeks Gag Order

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Jeremy Scahill - Aug. 03 (Special Report) - It became common practice during the Iraq occupation for the US State Department to work with private security companies like Blackwater to help facilitate giving what amounted to hush money to the families of Iraqis shot dead by private security contractors. In fact, Blackwater's owner, Erik Prince, discussed this practice when he testified in front of Congress in October 2007 and admitted to paying $20,000 to a Blackwater victim's family and $5,000 to another.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The Torture Memos and Historical Amnesia

Mon, 25 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Noam Chomsky - May. 25 (Special Report) - The reigning doctrine of the country is sometimes called "American exceptionalism." It is nothing of the sort. It is probably close to a universal habit among imperial powers. France was hailing its "civilizing mission" in its colonies, while the French Minister of War called for "exterminating the indigenous population" of Algeria. Britain's nobility was a "novelty in the world," John Stuart Mill declared, while urging that this angelic power delay no longer in completing its liberation of India.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.2 average - 9 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

KBR Got Bonuses for Work that Killed Soldiers

Sat, 23 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Jeremy Scahill - May. 23 (News Report) - Senator Dorgan said there are "tens of thousands of examples" of unnecessary risks to US soldiers, including deaths that have arisen as a result of KBR's work. "Why should [KBR] be getting more contracts now that we know all this information?" asked Sen. Bob Casey. "The Defense Department has not answered these questions."

NewsTrust Rating: 4.5 average - 10 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

What Was I Fighting For?

Thu, 21 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Rick Reyes - May. 21 (Opinion) - I never detained or arrested anyone guilty of a crime. I witnessed firsthand the ineffectiveness of US military strategy in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, I didn't fully grasp the extent of these failed foreign policies or our government's deception until I returned home from war. Realizing there never were weapons of mass destruction, and that we would have difficulty tracking terrorists even if we had committed all the troops in our military, I felt as though my patriotism had been exploited for political gain. A select few were profiting from these wars, while the majority of Americans shouldered the enormous tax burden.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.3 average - 11 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Our Loss is BlackRock's Gain

Thu, 21 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Robert Scheer - May. 21 (Investigative Report) - How much do you know about the BlackRock hedge fund? Better bone up fast, now that the folks at BlackRock are calling the shots in the government's trillion-dollar bailout program. As both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, BlackRock execs are now directing key elements of the government program at a time when they stand to reap great profits from the fallout of a problem they helped create.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.2 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Has the 'Journal' Lost Its Soul?

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Scott Sherman - Apr. 29 (Investigative Report) - Murdoch has not corrupted the Journal. Instead, he has smothered it and made it ordinary. When Prager invokes the Journal's "soul," he is referring to a tradition that was old-fashioned in the best sense, the sense that valued novelty, surprise and seriousness. An old copy of the Journal was a bit like an old copy of The New Yorker: one could pick it up months later and find something fresh, enduring and original. Today, if you pick up a month-old copy of the Journal, you will mostly find stale news.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.7 average - 7 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

A Lexicon of Disappointment

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Naomi Klein - Apr. 19 (Opinion) - Whatever the last straw, a growing number of Obama enthusiasts are starting to entertain the possibility that their man is not, in fact, going to save the world if we all just hope really hard.

NewsTrust Rating: 2.6 average - 5 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Pulp Nonfiction

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Christopher Hayes - Apr. 02 (Opinion) - Two years in Washington have started to make me feel jaded. I've come to expect that even nobly conceived laws will be manipulated and distorted for private ends. But once in a while I hear a story that gives me the queasy feeling that I'm nowhere near cynical enough. Such is the case with the tale of the paper industry and the alternative-fuel tax credit.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.3 average - 5 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The Dirt on Clean Coal

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Ari Berman - Mar. 28 (Special Report) - Critics argue that "clean coal" means anything the industry wants it to, pointing out that of the country's 616 coal plants, none are carbon-free or close to it. The viability of an environmentally sustainable future for coal is questionable, and so is the industry's commitment to cleaning itself up. The Center for American Progress recently released a report showing that the country's biggest coal companies have spent only a fraction of their multibillion-dollar profits developing technologies to curb carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants. "The ads and other public clean coal activities are merely designed to delay global warming solutions without suffering a public relations black eye," the CAP report stated.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.7 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Cut the Military Budget--II

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Nation - By Barney Frank - Feb. 15 (Opinion) - When I asked him years ago what he thought about military spending as stimulus, Alan Greenspan, to his credit, noted that from an economic standpoint military spending was like insurance: if necessary to meet its primary need, it had to be done, but it was not good for the economy; and to the extent that it could be reduced, the economy would benefit.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.6 average - 9 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Senate Dems Compromise Away Best Parts of Recovery Plan

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By John Nichols - Feb. 10 (Opinion) - In order to get the votes of two Republican (Maine's Susan Collins and Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter) and perhaps another (Mainer Olympia Snowe) that were needed to undermine the threat of a GOP filibuster, Reid surrendered $86 billion is proposed stimulus spending. In doing so, the Democrats agreed to cut not just fat but bone, and to warp the focus and intent of the legislation.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.2 average - 5 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

All of Them Must Go

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Nation - By Naomi Klein - Feb. 09 (News Analysis) - Perhaps the sturdiest thread connecting this global backlash is a rejection of the logic of "extraordinary politics"--the phrase coined by Polish politician Leszek Balcerowicz to describe how, in a crisis, politicians can ignore legislative rules and rush through unpopular "reforms."

NewsTrust Rating: 4.2 average - 17 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Bush's Farewell Fabrication

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Nation - By John Nichols - Jan. 16 (Comment) - Reading the talking points of the Bush Legacy Project, which is being managed by former White House political czar, the outgoing president reprised the Orwellian themes of his tenure: freedom promoted at the point of a gun, occupations framed as "liberations," fearmongering and a cowboy's claim of victory in a "war on terror" that still has no direction, no endgame, no capture of Osama bin Laden.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.5 average - 6 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The Growing Clout of the Nouveau Poor

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Nation - By Barbara Ehrenreich - Jan. 15 (Opinion) - Ever on the lookout for the bright side of hard times, I am tempted to delete "class inequality" from my worry list. Less than a year ago, it was the one of the biggest economic threats on the horizon, with even hard-line conservative pundits grousing that wealth was flowing uphill at an alarming rate, leaving the middle class stuck with stagnating incomes while the new super-rich ascended to the heavens in their personal jets. Then the whole top-heavy structure of American capitalism began to totter, and--poof!--inequality all but vanished from the public discourse. A financial columnist in the Chicago Sun Times has just announced that the recession is a "great leveler," serving to "democratize[d] the agony," as we all tumble into "the Nouveau Poor..."

NewsTrust Rating: 4.4 average - 6 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

What's the Matter With Rick Warren?

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

The Nation - By Sarah Posner - Dec. 19 (News Analysis) - Warren vocally opposes gay marriage, does not believe in evolution, has compared abortion to the Holocaust and backed the assassination of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.4 average - 5 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

'Center-Right'? Not Quite...

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

The Nation - By Eric Alterman - Dec. 17 (Opinion) - If you examine the actual policy positions of those Americans who eschew the liberal label, you'll see that the vast majority of Americans, whatever they may call themselves, embrace the "liberal" position on virtually every significant issue. (Replace the word "liberal" with "progressive," and you will nearly double the number of respondents who claim it.)

NewsTrust Rating: 4.1 average - 5 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Who Are the Taliban? The Afghan War Deciphered

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Tomdispatch.com - By Anand Gopal - Dec. 10 (Special Report) - Almost every suicide attack and kidnapping is attributed to "the Taliban." In reality, however, the insurgency is far from monolithic.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.5 average - 11 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer