Podcast Powered By Podbean Download this episode (right click and save) Jim Turner’s guest is former federal prosecutor Andrew Grosso who talks about the differences in press and privacy laws in England and the U.S. Grossso explains why the Rupert Murdoch News of the World voice mail hacking scandal came about …
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Autism and Vaccines by Dr. Helen Ratajczak, Please click on link to read: http://library.constantcontact.com/download/get/file/1101240076659-857/ratajczakstudy.pdf
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Podcast Powered By Podbean Download this episode (right click and save) Guest: Lisa Graves Lisa Graves, the Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy, the publisher of PR Watch, SourceWatch, and BanksterUSA. She previously served as a senior advisor in all three branches of the federal government, as a leading …
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For centuries they’ve been a part of maritime legend, inspiring curiosity and terror in equal measure. Lurking in the depths of the oceans, shocking in size and appearance, gigantic serpents and prehistoric monsters are as much a source of fascination as ever, especially in Hollywood.
In the past two or three years alone, attacks by huge undersea beasts have provided the centrepiece battles at the ends of blockbusters such as Pirates Of The Caribbean, Clash Of The Titans and The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader.
Remember the big Wall Street showdown? Thought that ended a year ago, when President Barack Obama signed the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation? Think again. Wall Street lobbyists don’t give up so easily.
What Congress voted on was a broad outline for reform. Now that the law is moving through the rulemaking process, armies of financial industry lobbyists are working to water down every line.
With guilty pleasure, the mainstream media have been serving us a virtual buffet of reasons to despise Rupert Murdoch’s evil media empire. Amid this fetid mess, however, it shouldn’t be forgotten that beneath every media mogul, however rotten, is an enterprise of real people—a culture of workers who represent the embattled and tragic state of journalism today.
The ethical breaches at issue clearly reflect top-to-bottom corruption. Yet more importantly, the underlying criminality lies in a vulgar laissez faire corporate culture in which honesty and critical thought are dismissed as an impediment to commercial success.
WASHINGTON — The Dow Jones industrial average enjoyed triple-digit gains in two of the last three days thanks to investor optimism that Europe is getting its debt crisis under control. However, experts warn that this may prove overly optimistic and problems abroad still could spread to our shores.
The Dow gained 152.50 points Thursday, a strong showing after Tuesday’s 202-point gain, the largest one-day gain this year. A draft document from a European summit on Greece’s debt woes prompted Thursday’s rally.
A Riddle: Which fleet did not reach its destination but fulfilled its mission?
Well, it’s this year’s Gaza solidarity flotilla.
It could be said, of course, that last year’s “little fleet” – that’s what the word means in Spanish, much as “guerrilla” means “little war” – is also a reasonable candidate . It never reached Gaza, but the commander of the Israeli navy could well repeat the words of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, whose victory over the Romans was so costly that he is said to have exclaimed: “Another such victory, and I am lost!”
Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist gave debtors’ prison a bad rap. Too bad. I’d say that locking away GOP Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a penitentiary for deadbeats seems like a darn good idea.
Let’s talk about how we ended up in this pickle, bucking up against the “debt ceiling.” From 2001 to 2008, a Republican President took an annual surplus of $86 billion left for him by Bill Clinton and ran up the budget deficit to over half a trillion in a year ($642 billion in 2008). Altogether, George W. Bush blew up the national debt by over $3 TRILLION–then left the bills to Barack Obama.
In 2005, American liberals achieved one of their most significant political victories of the last decade. It occurred with the resounding rejection of George W Bush’s campaign to privatise social security.
Bush’s scheme would have gutted the crux of that entitlement programme by converting it from what it has been since the 1940s – a universal guarantor of minimally decent living conditions for America’s elderly – into a Wall Street casino and bonanza.
Progressive activists and bloggers relentlessly attacked both the plan and underlying premises (the myth that social security faces a “crisis”), spawning nationwide opposition. Only a few months after he unveiled his scheme to great fanfare, Bush was forced to sheepishly withdraw it, a defeat he described as his biggest failure.
Recently, the bond rating agencies that gave junk derivatives triple-A ratings threatened to downgrade US Treasury bonds if the White House and Congress did not reach a deficit reduction deal and debt ceiling increase. The downgrade threat is not credible, and neither is the default threat. Both are make-believe crises that are being hyped in order to force cutbacks in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
If the rating agencies downgraded Treasuries, the company executives would be arrested for the fraudulent ratings that they gave to the junk that Wall Street peddled to the rest of the world. The companies would be destroyed and their ratings discredited. The US government will never default on its bonds, because the bonds, unlike those of Greece, Spain, and Ireland, are payable in its own currency. Regardless of whether the debt ceiling is raised, the Federal Reserve will continue to purchase the Treasury’s debt. If Goldman Sachs is too big to fail, then so is the US government.
It hits you like a punch in the gut, losing your job. Being laid off. Being fired.
It stops you cold in the middle of your day even if you’ve seen it coming. Even if you hate your job and being out of it will be a relief. If you love your job, it hurts like a bad breakup—it’s heartbreaking.
I was laid off not long ago, and I know all too well the mix of panic and hurt that comes with the news. I know the jumble of thoughts that come rushing in—how will I pay my rent blending with I’ll never find a job I like this much again, worst-case scenarios and ways to make money and plans I’ll have to cancel all at once.
There is one group of American workers so disenfranchised that corporations are able to get away with paying them wages that rival those of third-world sweatshops. These laborers have been legally stripped of their political, economic and social rights and ultimately relegated to second-class citizens. They are banned from unionizing, violently silenced from speaking out and forced to work for little to no wages. This marginalization renders them practically invisible, as they are kept hidden from society with no available recourse to improve their circumstances or change their plight.
They are the 2.3 million American prisoners locked behind bars where we cannot see or hear them. And they are modern-day slaves of the 21st century.