Thom Hartmann: UNEQUAL Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights

Read Buzzflash review of this book

"In a nutshell, a book that reveals what you won't see on televsision [sic television] or read in the paper because the corporate owners of the media don't want you to know that they've grabbed up rights that belong to the American people."

'Republicans Are Shocked The Public Is Mad At Them For Voting Against Franken’s Anti-Rape Amendment

By Amanda Terkel
ThinkProgress.org
November 13, 2009

Last month, 30 Republican senators [Both Arizona Senators Kyl and McCain voted NO] voted against Sen. Al Franken’s (D-MN) amendment that would punish defense contractors “if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court.” His amendment was inspired by Jamie Leigh Jones, who was gang-raped by her co-workers while working for Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad in 2005, and then had to fight her employer for justice.

The GOP senators who sided with defense contractors at the expense of women — such as John Thune (SD) — have been facing an intense backlash. David Vitter (LA) refused to give a rape victim a straight answer when she confronted him about his vote, claiming that he is “absolutely supportive of any [rape] case like that being prosecuted criminally to the full extent of the law.”

Click here for the rest of the story.

Anatomy of Casino Capitalism

The RealNews
Nov. 11, 2009

Jane D'Arista unravels the web of banking confidence schemes

Jane D'Arista is an economist with the Financial Markets Center in Philomont, VA. She is a Research Associate with the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) and author of the masterful study of U.S. financial regulation, The Evolution of U.S. Finance. For more than thirty years, Jane D'Arista has been one of the country's most insightful analysts of financial markets and regulation.

Too Big to Block? Why Obama Must Stop the Comcast-NBC Merger

By Josh Silver, Executive Director, Free Press
Huffington Post
Posted: November 13, 2009 11:04 AM

By next week, cable giant Comcast is expected to announce a deal to buy NBC-Universal, the biggest proposed media merger in recent memory. Comcast, the largest cable company and the No. 1 Internet service provider in the nation, would take over the NBC empire: a television network, Universal Studios, MSNBC, CNBC, USA Network, Telemundo, the Weather Channel, Hulu.com, 27 television stations and a host of other properties. The merger could be announced as early as Sunday.

This train wreck of a deal will hurt all over. It will mean increased costs for cable television service; currently free online NBC content locked behind a pay wall; less opportunity for the distribution of independent media; even fewer choices and less programming diversity. On average, nearly one quarter of all channels offered to cable subscribers will be owned by the bloated Comcast.

Click here for the rest of an important story that details the disastrous effects of such a merger on diversity and access to information and what we can do to stop it.

Still-murky copyright treaty could change web as we use it

Published by The Toronto Star
Sun. Nov. 8, 2009

The future of the Internet in Canada may have been decided in Seoul, Korea, this past week.

But it's hard to be sure, since the latest negotiations for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement were held in secret, as they have been in the past, and the only details came to the public through leaks, says Michael Geist, a law professor and Star columnist, who himself posted a leaked chapter on the agreement's Internet Policy on his personal website.

"We're dealing with intellectual property agreements that are being treated as akin to nuclear secrets and that just doesn't make any sense at all," Geist says. "That's the transparency side of this. Then, of course, there's the content side of it... this week, they crossed the line into the realm of affecting individuals very, very directly."

If it's any measure of the public's interest, Geist's site got 100,000 unique hits in a 24-hour span after he posted the document.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is an attempt to update international law to deal with online intellectual-property violations. The negotiations concluded on Friday and the next round are scheduled for Mexico in January.

The member states, which include the U.S., Canada, the European Union, and other states including Morocco and Mexico, hope to finish off the discussion and make it law later that year. For the average Internet user in Canada, then, 2010 could shape up to be a drastically different year than 2009, with much more scrutiny given to everything you do on your computer and mobile device – every download, upload, viewing, phone unlocking, burning, backing up, etc.

One of the proposals, according to leaks, involve a three-strikes system: three infringements and your Internet service provider (ISP) has to yank the cord from the IP address, not just the lone user. A few illegal downloads, iPhone hackings or movie uploads and an entire family could be without Internet for 12 months.

Click here for the rest of the story about how this treaty if ratified will impact the use of the Internet in the United States.

Check out these articles: Copyright Overreach Takes a World Tour
Knock it off: Global treaty against media piracy won't work in Asia

True US unemployment rate stands at 17.5%

By Stephen C. Webster
RawStory
Saturday, November 7th, 2009 -- 1:06 pm

According to figures released by the Department of Labor, the real marker of American unemployment stands at 17.5 percent -- a figure which takes into account under-employed workers and those who have not sought work in the last four weeks, according to a published report.

"If statistics went back so far, the measure would almost certainly be at its highest level since the Great Depression," reporter David Leonhardt wrote in Friday's edition of The New York Times.

The report continued: "In all, more than one out of every six workers — 17.5 percent — were unemployed or underemployed in October. The previous recorded high was 17.1 percent, in December 1982."

While official unemployment statistics were not available during the Great Depression, Department of Labor economists working with the Times estimated that some 30 percent of the U.S. workforce was put out during that period, the report added.

President Barack Obama called the figures "sobering," responding to widespread media accounts that placed the figure just over 10 percent, noting the department's calculation of workers who are actively searching for jobs.

Click here for rest of the story.

Nader: "Only the Rich Can Save Us"

Jason Leopold interviews Ralph Nader about his new book, "Only the Super Rich Can Save Us." The book is a utopian fictional account that raises expectations about the power of real-life wealthy public progressive leaders including Warren Buffet, Ted Turner, Yoko Ono and Phil Donahue, jump-start a progressive revolution using their enormous wealth.

Is the House Health Care Bill Better than Nothing

By Marcia Angell, M.D.
Physician, Author, Senior Lecturer, Harvard Medical School
Huffington Post
November 8, 2009

Well, the House health reform bill -- known to Republicans as the Government Takeover -- finally passed after one of Congress's longer, less enlightening debates. Two stalwarts of the single-payer movement split their votes; John Conyers voted for it; Dennis Kucinich against. Kucinich was right.

Conservative rhetoric notwithstanding, the House bill is not a "government takeover." I wish it were. Instead, it enshrines and subsidizes the "takeover" by the investor-owned insurance industry that occurred after the failure of the Clinton reform effort in 1994.

To be sure, the bill has a few good provisions (expansion of Medicaid, for example), but they are marginal. It also provides for some regulation of the industry (no denial of coverage because of pre-existing conditions, for example), but since it doesn't regulate premiums, the industry can respond to any regulation that threatens its profits by simply raising its rates.

The bill also does very little to curb the perverse incentives that lead doctors to over-treat the well-insured. And quite apart from its content, the bill is so complicated and convoluted that it would take a staggering apparatus to administer it and try to enforce its regulations.

What does the insurance industry get out of it? Tens of millions of new customers, courtesy of the mandate and taxpayer subsidies. And not just any kind of customer, but the youngest, healthiest customers -- those least likely to use their insurance. The bill permits insurers to charge twice as much for older people as for younger ones. So older under-65's will be more likely to go without insurance, even if they have to pay fines. That's OK with the industry, since these would be among their sickest customers. (Shouldn't age be considered a pre-existing condition?)

Click here for the rest of the story with Dr. Angell's recommendations.

U.S. Supreme Court to Decide Whether to Upend McCain Feingold

Corporate Money In Elections -- What To Expect

By Dave Johnson
Campaign for America's Future
November 2, 2009 - 10:50am ET

The Supreme Court may decide as soon as tomorrow on the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case involving a corporate-funded anti-Hillary smear ad. It is likely the conservative-dominated activist court will overturn precedent and rule in favor of removing restrictions on corporate spending in elections, with terrible consequences. The 5-4 ruling will say that large companies injecting vast sums to sway election results is “free speech.” Imagine, vocal cords on a Cayman Islands post office box!

Common Cause has a report out, titled, Corporate Democracy: Potential fallout from a Supreme Court decision on Citizens United. "Lifting the ban on corporate political spending could unleash a flood of money into the political system and further diminish the public’s voice," the report says.

Really, imagine regular people trying to run for office while competing with the massive aggregated financial power of the biggest corporations. And imagine what will happen to anyone who dares to try to go up against their interests when they are able to openly spend any amount needed to get their way. I have come up with some examples of what to expect:

Click here for the rest of the story.

Progressive Values Dominant-- But Need to Rebuild Trust in Effectiveness of Government Action

Progressive States Network
Stateside Dispatch
11/02/09

We'll no doubt hear too much commentary reading too much into a few elections tomorrow in a handful of states, so it's worth stepping back to recognize the deep support for progressive policies and ideas that are increasingly dominant across our nation. Obama's election as President is one indicator of that shift, but progressive gains are reflected in the underlying support for progressive policies in poll after poll, whether in demands for greater corporate accountability, health care reform, environmental sustainability or a host of other issues.

If progressives face a challenge, it's not on allegiance to our values such as rewarding work or greater justice, it's a skepticism by many independents of the effectiveness of government in accomplishing the goals shared by most of the public.

However, if we understand the public support for progressive goals, it can inform our political messaging which should embrace a clear progressive agenda, even as we recognize that trust in government needs to be rebuilt after decades of right-wing attacks on its functioning. And we should also act with confidence, knowing that younger voters are even more progressive than their parents and grandparents, so our ability to move policy forward will only grow with each election cycle as these new progressives become a larger and larger share of the electorate.

This Dispatch will outline these trends in public opinion, with special emphasis on the results of two wide-ranging surveys this year, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press report, Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes: 1987-2009 (hereafter "Pew"), and the Center for American Progress report, State of American Political Ideology, 2009: A National Study of Values and Beliefs (hereafter "CAP-beliefs"). Other reports will be touched on as well, but the core results are similar across all major surveys on these points.

The Progressive States Network Stateside Dispatch is published monthly. For the series of articles on building trust in the effectivesness in government click on this link.

Progressive Values Dominant-- But Need to Rebuild Trust in Effectiveness of Government Action
- Support for Progressive Values and Policy
- Addressing Fears on the Effectiveness of Government Action
- The Increasingly Isolated Right-Wing
- The Future Will Only Be More Progressive
- Conclusion

Un-Censored: An Award For The BRAD BLOG and a New Premium Offer for BRAD BLOG Readers!

By Brad Friedman
The Bradblog
11/02/09

For various reasons, now seems a good moment to mention that The BRAD BLOG was honored this year with a prestigious Project Censored 2010 award for our coverage of the mysterious death of the GOP's IT guru Mike Connell. Connell, for those unfamiliar with the story (see background links at bottom of this article) was in the process of testifying about his rumored role in helping the GOP carry out fraud in Ohio's '04 Presidential Election when he was then reportedly threatened by Karl Rove. Weeks later he suddenly plunged to his death in a single-engine plane crash just before Christmas last year as he was preparing to land in Columbus while coming home from one of his frequent trips to D.C..

My colleagues Mark Crispin Miller and Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane were also honored by PC for their own coverage of the story.

Project Censored, based out of Sonoma State University, has been highlighting overlooked stories each year since 1976, and was recognized by Walter Cronkite as "one of the organizations that we should listen to, to be assured our newspaper and our broadcasting outlets are practicing thorough and ethical journalism."

In addition to our "Excellence in Investigative Journalism" award from PC this year, as highlighted in their annual "Top 25 Censored Stories for 2010", I was also asked to write a chapter on problems faced by voters in Election 2008 for this year's book, Censored 2010: The Top 25 Censored Stories of 2008-09.
For the rest of the story click here.

The Incredible Shrinking Public Option

By Robert Parry
Consortium News
November 2, 2009

When the U.S. health care debate began last spring, the insurance industry and its congressional defenders fretted over the prospect that 119 million Americans might defect from private insurance to a public option, thus devastating the business model of wealthy insurance companies.

Since then, however, the industry has won so many concessions that the threat from the surviving public option has shrunk to about five percent of its feared effect. In assessing the House leadership’s health reform bill, the Congressional Budget Office projects that only six million Americans could or would sign up for the bill’s version of the public option.

And, to make the picture even prettier for the insurance industry, many of those six million would be the chronically ill, customers that the private insurers don’t want anyway.

Because of unified Republican resistance to any health-care overhaul and the objections of conservative and rural Democrats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi scrapped her goal of a “robust” public option, one whose payments would be linked to Medicare rates and thus could have saved substantial money for the insured and the government, about $110 billion over the next 10 years, the CBO estimated.

Instead, Pelosi accepted a version of the public option which would require the government to negotiate rates with health providers just as private insurers do. That means the pressure to hold down medical costs would be much less and the potential savings would largely disappear.

Indeed, the CBO projects that the public option would have to charge premiums higher than private insurers because people with illnesses would turn to the public option as a more reliable way to get their medical treatment than what they could expect from profit-making companies, which would still look for ways of minimizing payouts

For the rest of the story click here.

Here are two related articles. Public Option Plan Will Cover Few Americans, New Statistic Reveals and The Two Percent Robustness.