March 25, 2012

Bill Moyers: Andrew Bacevich on Sgt. Robert Bales

Historian Andrew Bacevich appears on Bill Moyers' new show, Moyers & Company, this weekend on most PBS local stations. Bacevich and Moyers explore the futility of "endless" wars, and provide a reality check on the rhetoric of American exceptionalism. Check local listings: http://billmoyers.com/schedule

In this web exclusive video clip, Bacevich -- a West Point graduate and Vietnam veteran-turned-scholar -- talks about Robert Bales, the army staff sergeant who allegedly killed 17 Afghan civilians on March 11. Does Bales symbolize a larger problem in our military ranks? Bacevich comments on Bales' accountability, the stress of repeated tours on soldiers, and how war itself "compromises our humanity."

March 25, 2012

Bill Moyers Essay: The Dangerous Road of Wishful Thinking

Bill Moyers counsels President Obama not to look at America through the rose-colored glasses of people -- like Robert Kagan -- led by political opportunity and wishful thinking, but by those -- like Andrew Bacevich -- who see the world as it truly is, and are best poised to make it better.

March 25, 2012

Bill Moyers/Michael Winship: PBS Undercuts Indie Documentaries

from Consortium News:



PBS Undercuts Indie Documentaries
March 24, 2012

In recent years, PBS has grown more and more timid as financial and political pressures have mounted, explaining why two of its more controversial series presenting independent documentaries have gotten stuck in a time slot guaranteeing fewer viewers. PBS veterans Bill Moyers and Michael Winship object.

By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship


Neither of us is old enough to have been fooled by the Trojan Horse (see Wikipedia). But we each have been working in public television decades enough to remember the days when distribution was handled by physically transporting bulky 2-inch videotapes from station to station — “bicycled” was the word — and much of the broadcast day and night was devoted to blackboard lectures, string quartets and lessons in Japanese brush painting: The old educational television versions of reality TV.

Yet it also was a time of innovation and creativity. As the system evolved we saw bold experiments like PBL — the Public Broadcasting Laboratory and Al Perlmutter’s The Great American Dream Machine, each a predecessor to the commercial TV magazine shows 60 Minutes and 20/20.

The TV Lab, jointly run by David Loxton at WNET in New York and Fred Barzyk at WGBH in Boston, nurtured and encouraged the first generation of video artists — Nam June Paik, Bill Viola and William Wegman among others — and the early documentary work of such video pioneers as Jon Alpert and Keiko Tsuno of the Downtown Community Television Center, Alan and Susan Raymond, and the wild and woolly, guerrilla camera crews of TVTV.

The descendants of those pathfinders are the independent filmmakers whose works have not only re-energized the motion picture industry but also have vastly expanded the realm of the documentary – in both the scope of its storytelling and the size and diversity of its audience. Public television has faithfully provided an enormous national stage where nonfiction films can be seen by far more people than could ever buy tickets at the handful of movie houses willing to put documentaries up on their theater screens. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2012/03/24/pbs-undercuts-indie-documentaries/

March 25, 2012

Lobby Behind Trayvon Martin’s Death

from Consortium News:



Lobby Behind Trayvon Martin’s Death
March 25, 2012

The slaying of unarmed teen-ager Trayvon Martin has shed light on the shadowy American Legislative Exchange Council, which dreams up pro-corporate legislation to peddle to the states and – as with the gun-toting “Stand Your Ground” law – can inflict suffering and death on innocent people, Bill Berkowitz reports.

By Bill Berkowitz


There is little doubt that it was George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old self-appointed “neighborhood watch vigilante,” who shot and killed the 17-year-old Trayvon Martin last month as he “returned from a trip to 7-11 with an iced tea and a pack of Skittles.”

Less known is the relationship between the Florida “stand your ground” law, which may allow the killer of Trayvon Martin to walk free, and a powerful but private, behind-the-scenes organization that has channeled such bills into the legislatures of Florida and other states.

The Florida law that is drawing such sudden attention due to the death of a teenager in Sanford “is the template for an American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) ‘model bill’ that has been pushed in other states,” PR Watch’s Brendan Fischer recently reported.

Fischer says that “Evidence suggests a major reason Zimmerman thought he needed to use deadly force against the unarmed Martin is because the teen was black. … Zimmerman has not been charged with any crime.” ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2012/03/25/lobby-behind-trayvon-martins-death/

March 25, 2012

In Praise of the Wonderful Bean

Coffee and your arteries
Research on caffeine found that it may improve the function of arteries.

By Harvard Health Publications

Wise lifestyle choices pay off for men, earning them enhanced vigor and longer lives. Prudent choices also pay off for stand-up comics, providing easy targets that earn loud laughs. The jokes often take advantage of the notion that anything that feels good or tastes good must be bad for you.

So it is with coffee. Its appeal is undeniable; about 150 million Americans drink coffee every day, together consuming some 400 million cups a day. Coffee is popular because it tastes good, and it makes most people feel better. Perhaps that's why it's been blamed for innumerable woes. It's true that some people experience symptoms such as nervousness, a racing heart, headaches, insomnia, heartburn, and excessive urination after just a cup or two. And it's also true that coffee can boost blood pressure, but the rise is small and short-lived, and people who drink coffee regularly are largely spared from even this modest hit.

Coffee has also taken the rap for more serious illnesses, ranging from heart attacks and strokes to cancer of the pancreas. Careful studies have debunked these fears, but lingering concerns persist, particularly regarding coffee's cardiovascular effects. That's why coffee lovers will welcome a study that makes coffee seem a bit sweeter; the research was conducted in Israel, where coffee is nearly as popular as in the U.S. To understand the experiments, though, we should first review how your arteries are built and how they work.

Your arteries: An inside look

Doctors used to think of arteries as simple passive conduits for blood, working for your body the way a garden hose works for your lawn. Wrong! In fact, arteries are complex structures with crucial regulatory functions, and they are on the front line of the battle for cardiovascular health. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://health.msn.com/health-topics/heart-and-cardiovascular/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100288435

March 24, 2012

Katrina vanden Heuvel: The man blocking America’s recovery

from the WaPo:


By Katrina vanden Heuvel, Published: March 19 | Updated: Tuesday, March 20, 7:00 AM


He is the most powerful federal employee you’ve never heard of. Edward DeMarco has slowed the economic recovery with the stroke of a pen. His actions are costing taxpayers tens of billions of dollars, forcing millions of homeowners to lose their homes, and contributing to the falling housing prices that are a brake on the recovery.

Not bad for an obscure “acting director” who should have departed his position long ago.

Edward DeMarcoheads the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). He’s a temp, in office only because — no surprise — Senate Republicans, led by Richard Shelby (Ala.), refused even to allow a vote on the man President Obama nominated for the post.

And DeMarco is philosophically opposed to the common-sense solutions needed to deal with the housing crisis. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-man-blocking-americas-recovery/2012/03/19/gIQAYoLKOS_story.html?wpisrc=emailtoafriend

March 24, 2012

Dave Zirin: Jackie Robinson, Trayvon Martin and the Sad History of Sanford, Florida

from The Nation:


Jackie Robinson, Trayvon Martin and the Sad History of Sanford, Florida
Dave Zirin on March 23, 2012 - 12:16 AM ET


Sanford, Florida is a city that will now be known for all times as the place where Trayvon Martin was killed for the crime of Living While Black. It's in addition the place whose institutions—the police department, the local press, and even the city morgue—treated Trayvon and his body in ways that should disturb anyone with a shred of conscience.

The city of Sanford also has a past that speaks to the racism many believe to be at the heart of why Trayvon was killed and why the man who pulled the trigger was not arrested. I'm not arguing that Sanford, Florida, is somehow more or less twisted than anywhere else. Last month, unarmed, 18-year-old Ramarley Graham was killed in his bathroom by police in New York City. Last week Dane Scott Jr. in Del City, Oklahoma, was killed by police after a “scuffle.” The state medical examiner's office, however, declared Scott's death a homicide. The murder of Trayvon Martin is a “local issue” only if we understand “local” to mean local communities across the country.

But Sanford, Florida, does have its own history and it includes a collective moment of intolerance and bigotry that almost derailed the man Martin Luther King Jr. called “a freedom rider before freedom rides,” Jackie Robinson.

Before Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color line in 1947 as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers, he spent a season desegregating the minor leagues, playing for the Dodgers AAA team, the Montreal Royals. The Royals held Spring Training in Sanford. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/blog/166992/jackie-robinson-trayvon-martin-and-sad-history-sanford-florida

March 24, 2012

Why Leaving Goldman Sachs Breaks the Rules of the Game

from YES! Magazine:



Why Leaving Goldman Sachs Breaks the Rules of the Game
Defector Greg Smith has been called dishonest, unprofessional, and self-serving. But what might he be telling us about how to do business responsibly?

by Elizabeth Doty
posted Mar 23, 2012


In his transformative 1978 essay, "The Power of the Powerless," Czech dissident Václav Havel explains how one person “living in truth” can shine a light on unspoken questions, revealing the automatism of our usual assumptions: “When a single person breaks the rules of the game, thus exposing it as a game—everything suddenly appears in another light.”

With his March 14 New York Times op-ed, "Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs," now former Executive Director Greg Smith broke many rules of the game. He has been called unprofessional. Sanctimonious. Dishonest. Self-serving. Disgruntled. Naïve.

Like any defector, Greg Smith was disloyal. He aired dirty laundry, describing how Goldman Sachs had lost the client focus that once defined its culture. “It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off,” he said. Why would he so publicly denounce his employer? And after twelve years? He must, detractors speculate, not have been happy with his bonus. He must have been bypassed for promotion. He must be planning to write a book.

All of this is possible. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/why-leaving-goldman-sachs-breaks-the-rules-of-the-game

March 23, 2012

Iran and the Republican hawks (cartoon)

March 23, 2012

The Quiet Revolution in America’s Statehouses

from truthdig:



The Quiet Revolution in America’s Statehouses

Posted on Mar 22, 2012
By Bill Boyarsky


There’s nothing good about the House Republican-Mitt Romney budget plan. But perhaps its worst feature is the way it targets the many millions of working and unemployed poor who rely on the federal-state Medicaid program for medical care.

It does this by proposing huge reductions in Medicaid spending, and, most significantly, putting the program in the hands of the states, whose governments, strapped for money, are increasingly run by conservatives.

.....(snip).....

The Republican plan would turn Medicaid over to the states by giving them money in the form of “block grants,” large amounts of money that can be used with little restriction. Federal Medicaid expenditures would be reduced by $810 billion—45 percent, The New York Times estimates—over 10 years. So the states would be getting much less to care for their poor.

.....(snip).....

I noted in Truthdig a while back how the Republicans in 2010 won a majority of the nation’s state legislative seats. It was the largest majority for the Republican Party since 1928. The Republicans now control a majority of legislatures in the South, plus more governorships, including Florida, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Iowa. These victories came with the help of super PAC donations. Matt Sledge in The Huffington Post cited a study by the National Institute on Money in State Politics showing super PACs gave $36.8 million to state candidates between 2008 and 2010. Most of the donors were conservative. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_quiet_revolution_in_americas_statehouses_20120322/