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Is There Such a Thing as Agro-Imperialism?

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

New York Times - By Andrew Rice - Nov. 22 (Special Report) - Fearing food shortages, investors from wealthy countries are snapping up land in poor countries to grow food there. Is this development or exploitation?

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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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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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Endless Obstacles Delay Veteran Benefits

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Miller-McCune - By Aaron Glantz - Nov. 12 (Special Report) - The Department of Veterans Affairs routinely delays disability claims by wounded soldiers for months and years, often shunting them into homelessness. But there’s a simple way for the government to get disabled veterans the help they deserve. It can trust them.

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Nine states pose fiscal threat to US recovery

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Financial Times - By Nicole Bullock - Nov. 11 (News Report) - Some of the same financial troubles that have pushed California toward economic disaster are wreaking havoc in nine other states and posing a threat to the nascent recovery, according to research released

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GOP Gone Wild: Unruly Republicans Silence Women Lawmakers With Screams, Shouts, And Delay Tactics

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Think Progress - By Think Progress - Nov. 07 (Opinion) - This morning, the House began consideration of the rule for debate of the House health care bill. As the Democratic Women’s Caucus took to the microphone on the House floor to offer their arguments for how the bill would benefit women, House Republicans — led by Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) — repeatedly talked over, screamed, [...]

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Our Free Market Makes Economic Collapse Inevitable

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Bill Moyers Journal - By Bill Moyers, James Galbraith - Nov. 02 (Interview) - The headlines are trumpeting recovery — some are even proclaiming an end to the recession in the United States (unofficially, that is). The US economy grew in the third quarter for the first time in a year. But there are some caveats — although jobless claims dipped slightly, many analysts still warn of a "jobless recovery." for a number of years to come. And then there's the small print — will this recovery be permanent or is it a function of the stimulus masking bigger problems? The Wall Street Journal warned: "The recovery thus far has been heavily supported by federal money, casting a question mark over the economy's underlying strength as government support dwindles." That unease is echoed by JOURNAL guest James K. Galbraith

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Interview with James Galbraith

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By BillMoyers - Oct. 30 (Interview) - We need to find another path for economic expansion. We need to set a strategic direction. Our problem now, our big social and environmental problem, is energy. It's climate change. It's the greenhouse gas emission issue. If we built a set of institutions that could deal with that problem effectively, you could employ a large part of the labor force for a generation, dealing with that. And you'd then make that profitable for private enterprise to get into in a serious way.

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House Health Bill

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Think Progress - By Matthew Yglesias - Oct. 29 (Opinion) - One of the key differences between the early draft of the House health bill and the Senate Finance draft was the different long-term implications of the financing mechanism. The House bill is financed by taxes on rich people. Since health spending is increasing faster than the overall economy, this meant that even though the House bill was deficit neutral in the 10-year CBO window, by the end of that period expenditures are rising faster than revenues. The Senate Finance bill, by contrast, raises revenue by phasing out the tax exclusion of employer-provided health insurance. Initially it does this by taxing only a small number of “Cadillac” plans, but over time the tax’s bite grows and grows. That means you have fiscal sustainability over the long run.

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Trade Your Job

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Valerie Saturen - Oct. 22 (News) - high school students who aren't headed for college are learning to retrofit houses; they stand to make up to $50 an hour once they're experienced journeymen. In Lansing, Michigan, unemployed auto workers can get up to $10,000 to train for new careers in renewable energy. .read more

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Rebranding America

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 20:09:36 -0700

New York Times - Oct. 18 (Opinion) - President Obama reminds us that America is not just a country but an idea, a great idea about opportunity for all and responsibility to your fellow man.

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Woman, 97, has a front seat to homelessness

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Bob Pool - Oct. 16 (Special Report) - She's 97 years old and homeless. Bessie Mae Berger has her two boys, and that's about all. She and sons Larry Wilkerson, 60, and Charlie Wilkerson, 62, live in a 1973 Chevrolet Suburban they park each night on a busy Venice street.

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Welcome to the gilded age of poverty chic

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Boston Globe - By Renée Loth - Oct. 16 (Opinion) - Welcome to the gilded age of poverty chic

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Study finds disconnect between healthcare needs and support for reform

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Kim Geiger - Oct. 11 (News Report) - A new study points to a political paradox in the long, wrenching debate over revamping the healthcare system: Some members of Congress whose constituents stand to gain the most are nonetheless opposing the bill, while others whose constituents will likely pay more for little reward are some of its most ardent supporters. The study by the Urban Institute identified 20 congressional districts where more than 30% of residents have no health coverage. Eighteen of those districts are in California, Texas or Florida. In California, the districts with the highest concentrations of uninsured were in Los Angeles and Orange counties, areas heavily populated by immigrants and other low-income groups. Most of those areas are represented by Democrats who support the healthcare proposals, which promise significant new benefits to their constituents.

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Taliban May Benefit From Global Warming

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ABC News - Oct. 11 (Special Report) - Worsening drought in Afghanistan playing into the hands of terrorists.

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Kenya: Waiting for El Nino

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Global Voices - By Samuel Maina - Oct. 09 (Special Report) - Kenyans are waiting for the El Nino rains anticipated between now and December 2009 with mixed feelings. Inasmuch as the El Nino is itself a natural disaster that in it's ‘moderate' form is expected to displace at least 100,000 people and leave 750,000 in need of humanitarian aid according to IRIN, most Kenyans actually want [...]

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Fairtrade coffee farmers battle for survival in Colombia

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

knowledge.insead.edu - By Rahilla Zafar - Oct. 08 (Special Report) - As the third-largest coffee producer behind only Brazil and Vietnam, more than 76 per cent of Colombia’s coffee is produced by small-holder farmers like Antonio. With over four million coffee farmers (10 per cent of the population), Colombia exports nearly 12 million 60 kilogramme bags per year; just over one million bags consist of specialised coffees such as organic and Fairtrade.

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Globalist: The Public Imperative

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Roger Cohen - Oct. 06 (Opinion) - Whatever may be right, something is rotten in American medicine. It should be fixed. But fixing it requires the acknowledgment that, when it comes to health, we’re all in this together. Pooling the risk between everybody is the most efficient way to forge a healthier society.

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G20: The two sides of the global economy

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

GlobalPost - By Thomas Mucha - Sep. 23 (Opinion) - As G20 leaders snake their way to Pittsburgh from all corners, they face very different circumstances from 12 months ago when the possibility of financial and economic catastrophe was all too real.

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For ACORN, Truth Lost Amid the Din

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Harold Meyerson - Sep. 23 (Opinion) - Actual instances of voter fraud were all but nonexistent. Why you might not know that.

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12 Shocking Ideas That Could Change the World

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - Sep. 22 (Opinion) - Warning: The people's ideas expressed here may be dangerous. For this year's list, we walked right past the usual suspects and went looking for trouble.

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Save the Slums

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Stewart Brand - Sep. 22 (Interview) - People are trying desperately to get out of poverty, so there's a lot of creativity; they collaborate in ways that we've completely forgotten how to do in regular cities. And there's a transition: People come in from the countryside, enter the rickshaw economy, and work for almost nothing. But after a while, they move uptown, into the formal economy. The United Nations did extensive field research and flipped from seeing squatter cities as the world's great problem to realizing these slums are actually the world's great solution to poverty.

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Barack Obama Must See Michael Moore's New Movie

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Arianna Huffington - Sep. 21 (Review) - Michael Moore has always had a remarkable feel for targeting the zeitgeist. He's done it again with his new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, a withering indictment of the current economic order that brilliantly navigates a cinematic tightrope, alternating between heart-wrenching portraits of the suffering caused by the economic crisis and

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Even Glenn Beck Is Right Twice a Day

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Frank Rich - Sep. 20 (Opinion) - Unlike liberal critics of capitalist inequities, of course, Beck and his claque are driven by an over-the-top detestation of government. Washington is always the enemy, stealing their hard-earned money to redistribute it to the undeserving and shiftless poor (some of whom just happen to be immigrants or black). Though there is nothing Obama can do to stop racists from being racist, he could help stanch the economic piece of this by demonstrating how a reformed government can at times actually make Americans’ lives better. That’s what F.D.R. did, and that’s the promise Obama made, swaying some Republicans and even some racists, during the campaign.

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Kennedy, Modest and Honest

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Jonathan Yardley - Sep. 17 (Review) - The late lion of the Senate sums up his life and times.

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