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marmar's Journal
April 2, 2012
from OnTheCommons.org:
Democracy Under Attack
Did Americans vote in 2010 to make it harder for them to vote in 2012?
By David Morris
For its first 200 years the American Republic slowly, sometimes infuriatingly slowly and at horrific human cost (e.g. the Civil War) expanded the franchise.
In 1870 the 15th Amendment gave blacks the right to vote. In 1920, the 19th Amendment extended the franchise to women. In 1924 Congress granted Native Americans citizenship and thus the right to vote. In 1961 the 23rd Amendment gave the residents of the District of Columbia the right to vote for President. In 1971 the 26th Amendment gave l8 year olds the vote. In 1986 Congress gave military personnel and other US citizens living abroad the right to use a federal write-in absentee ballot for voting for federal offices.
The right to vote, however, did not ensure that one could vote. Beginning at the end of the 19th century, states began passing legislation directed at restricting minority voting with often dramatic effect, especially in the South where turnout fell from 64.2 percent in 1888 to 29.0 percent in 1904.
For 100 years after the Civil War the Supreme Court ruled that even where state voting rules were discriminatory, the federal government had no right to intervene. Then in 1965 Congress finally gave blacks and other minorities the effective vote by passing the Voting Rights Act, eliminating most voting qualifications beyond citizenship for state and federal elections, including literacy tests and poll taxes. In 1966 the Supreme Court affirmed that law. .....................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://onthecommons.org/democracy-under-attack
Democracy Under Attack
from OnTheCommons.org:
Democracy Under Attack
Did Americans vote in 2010 to make it harder for them to vote in 2012?
By David Morris
For its first 200 years the American Republic slowly, sometimes infuriatingly slowly and at horrific human cost (e.g. the Civil War) expanded the franchise.
In 1870 the 15th Amendment gave blacks the right to vote. In 1920, the 19th Amendment extended the franchise to women. In 1924 Congress granted Native Americans citizenship and thus the right to vote. In 1961 the 23rd Amendment gave the residents of the District of Columbia the right to vote for President. In 1971 the 26th Amendment gave l8 year olds the vote. In 1986 Congress gave military personnel and other US citizens living abroad the right to use a federal write-in absentee ballot for voting for federal offices.
The right to vote, however, did not ensure that one could vote. Beginning at the end of the 19th century, states began passing legislation directed at restricting minority voting with often dramatic effect, especially in the South where turnout fell from 64.2 percent in 1888 to 29.0 percent in 1904.
For 100 years after the Civil War the Supreme Court ruled that even where state voting rules were discriminatory, the federal government had no right to intervene. Then in 1965 Congress finally gave blacks and other minorities the effective vote by passing the Voting Rights Act, eliminating most voting qualifications beyond citizenship for state and federal elections, including literacy tests and poll taxes. In 1966 the Supreme Court affirmed that law. .....................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://onthecommons.org/democracy-under-attack
April 2, 2012
Great efforts are underway both locally and nationally to keep secret the identities of people and organizations paying for local political advertisements. But Americans are not entirely powerless to the cause of transparency and democracy, even when broadcasters shirk their responsibilities. In this essay, Bill Moyers suggests what you can do to bring those names to light.
Bill Moyers Essay: Who Pays for Political Ads?
Great efforts are underway both locally and nationally to keep secret the identities of people and organizations paying for local political advertisements. But Americans are not entirely powerless to the cause of transparency and democracy, even when broadcasters shirk their responsibilities. In this essay, Bill Moyers suggests what you can do to bring those names to light.
April 2, 2012
from TomDispatch:
A New Energy Third World in North America?
How the Big Energy Companies Plan to Turn the United States into a Third-World Petro-State
By Michael T. Klare
The “curse” of oil wealth is a well-known phenomenon in Third World petro-states where millions of lives are wasted in poverty and the environment is ravaged, while tiny elites rake in the energy dollars and corruption rules the land. Recently, North America has been repeatedly hailed as the planet’s twenty-first-century “new Saudi Arabia” for “tough energy” -- deep-sea oil, Canadian tar sands, and fracked oil and natural gas. But here’s a question no one considers: Will the oil curse become as familiar on this continent in the wake of a new American energy rush as it is in Africa and elsewhere? Will North America, that is, become not just the next boom continent for energy bonanzas, but a new energy Third World?
Once upon a time, the giant U.S. oil companies -- Chevron, Exxon, Mobil, and Texaco -- got their start in North America, launching an oil boom that lasted a century and made the U.S. the planet’s dominant energy producer. But most of those companies have long since turned elsewhere for new sources of oil.
Eager to escape ever-stronger environmental restrictions and dying oil fields at home, the energy giants were naturally drawn to the economically and environmentally wide-open producing areas of the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America -- the Third World -- where oil deposits were plentiful, governments compliant, and environmental regulations few or nonexistent.
Here, then, is the energy surprise of the twenty-first century: with operating conditions growing increasingly difficult in the global South, the major firms are now flocking back to North America. To exploit previously neglected reserves on this continent, however, Big Oil will have to overcome a host of regulatory and environmental obstacles. It will, in other words, have to use its version of deep-pocket persuasion to convert the United States into the functional equivalent of a Third World petro-state. ...............(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175523/tomgram%3A_michael_klare%2C_welcome_to_the_new_third_world_of_energy%2C_the_u.s./#more
Welcome to the New Third World of Energy, the U.S.
from TomDispatch:
A New Energy Third World in North America?
How the Big Energy Companies Plan to Turn the United States into a Third-World Petro-State
By Michael T. Klare
The “curse” of oil wealth is a well-known phenomenon in Third World petro-states where millions of lives are wasted in poverty and the environment is ravaged, while tiny elites rake in the energy dollars and corruption rules the land. Recently, North America has been repeatedly hailed as the planet’s twenty-first-century “new Saudi Arabia” for “tough energy” -- deep-sea oil, Canadian tar sands, and fracked oil and natural gas. But here’s a question no one considers: Will the oil curse become as familiar on this continent in the wake of a new American energy rush as it is in Africa and elsewhere? Will North America, that is, become not just the next boom continent for energy bonanzas, but a new energy Third World?
Once upon a time, the giant U.S. oil companies -- Chevron, Exxon, Mobil, and Texaco -- got their start in North America, launching an oil boom that lasted a century and made the U.S. the planet’s dominant energy producer. But most of those companies have long since turned elsewhere for new sources of oil.
Eager to escape ever-stronger environmental restrictions and dying oil fields at home, the energy giants were naturally drawn to the economically and environmentally wide-open producing areas of the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America -- the Third World -- where oil deposits were plentiful, governments compliant, and environmental regulations few or nonexistent.
Here, then, is the energy surprise of the twenty-first century: with operating conditions growing increasingly difficult in the global South, the major firms are now flocking back to North America. To exploit previously neglected reserves on this continent, however, Big Oil will have to overcome a host of regulatory and environmental obstacles. It will, in other words, have to use its version of deep-pocket persuasion to convert the United States into the functional equivalent of a Third World petro-state. ...............(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175523/tomgram%3A_michael_klare%2C_welcome_to_the_new_third_world_of_energy%2C_the_u.s./#more
April 2, 2012
Published on Monday, April 2, 2012 by Common Dreams
A Very Sick Country
by David Michael Green
So.
It looks now like the regressive majority on the Supreme Court is poised to overturn Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement, his health care bill.
That is so fitting.
More than that, it is also a reminder of just how sick this country truly is. Imagine that the lab returned the results from your battery of blood work tests, and all the indicators were screaming out “Danger!” and “Broken!”. That’s us, baby. Get this patient to the ER!
What a total disaster.
The first indicator of how unhealthy we are as a country – literally and figuratively – is the fact that we still don’t have universal health care here in the wealthiest place on Earth. It’s been more than century since the welfare state – a system in which the national government assumes responsibility, as an agent of the national will, for guaranteeing certain benefits and protections to its citizenry – was invented, and, unlike every other developed country in the world, the richest one still doesn’t come close to having universal care for our public, including millions of children. It’s a crime – there’s no other word for it – of astonishing proportions . But it gets worse. We pay more than half-again per capita above the cost of the next most expensive system in the world, and still one-sixth of our population remains completely uninsured, with many more poorly insured. Nice. .................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/04/02-5
A Very Sick Country
Published on Monday, April 2, 2012 by Common Dreams
A Very Sick Country
by David Michael Green
So.
It looks now like the regressive majority on the Supreme Court is poised to overturn Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement, his health care bill.
That is so fitting.
More than that, it is also a reminder of just how sick this country truly is. Imagine that the lab returned the results from your battery of blood work tests, and all the indicators were screaming out “Danger!” and “Broken!”. That’s us, baby. Get this patient to the ER!
What a total disaster.
The first indicator of how unhealthy we are as a country – literally and figuratively – is the fact that we still don’t have universal health care here in the wealthiest place on Earth. It’s been more than century since the welfare state – a system in which the national government assumes responsibility, as an agent of the national will, for guaranteeing certain benefits and protections to its citizenry – was invented, and, unlike every other developed country in the world, the richest one still doesn’t come close to having universal care for our public, including millions of children. It’s a crime – there’s no other word for it – of astonishing proportions . But it gets worse. We pay more than half-again per capita above the cost of the next most expensive system in the world, and still one-sixth of our population remains completely uninsured, with many more poorly insured. Nice. .................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/04/02-5
April 2, 2012
from HuffPost:
With the economy just barely on a path to durable recovery, some very dumb fiscal chickens are coming home to roost on January 1 of next year. This grim coincidence is known as the Triple Witching Hour.
First, the legacy of last summer's ill-fated bipartisan fiscal bargain -- an automatic set of budget cuts totaling $1.2 trillion -- kicks in next January 1. Second, President Obama's temporary payroll tax cuts expire. And third -- this is a good witch -- all of President George B. Bush's tax cuts sunset.
Just for good measure, there is yet another witch. The temporary extension of the debt ceiling will also expire around the first of the year, giving the deficit hawks of both parties even more leverage.
The trouble is that all of this adds up to a massive fiscal contraction. If you want to snuff out a fragile recovery, there is no better way than to cut spending and otherwise shrink the federal deficit prematurely. If anything, the economy needs more public spending for at least a year or two to compensate for the hit to private purchasing power and the housing collapse. .....................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/double-dip-recession_b_1395455.html
Robert Kuttner: Recipe for a Double Dip Recession
from HuffPost:
With the economy just barely on a path to durable recovery, some very dumb fiscal chickens are coming home to roost on January 1 of next year. This grim coincidence is known as the Triple Witching Hour.
First, the legacy of last summer's ill-fated bipartisan fiscal bargain -- an automatic set of budget cuts totaling $1.2 trillion -- kicks in next January 1. Second, President Obama's temporary payroll tax cuts expire. And third -- this is a good witch -- all of President George B. Bush's tax cuts sunset.
Just for good measure, there is yet another witch. The temporary extension of the debt ceiling will also expire around the first of the year, giving the deficit hawks of both parties even more leverage.
The trouble is that all of this adds up to a massive fiscal contraction. If you want to snuff out a fragile recovery, there is no better way than to cut spending and otherwise shrink the federal deficit prematurely. If anything, the economy needs more public spending for at least a year or two to compensate for the hit to private purchasing power and the housing collapse. .....................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/double-dip-recession_b_1395455.html
April 2, 2012
from eonline:
It's the awards show that no one wants to be a part of!
The Golden Raspberry Awards, better known as the Razzies, handed out awards for the worst of the worst tonight, honoring the worst acting, directing and writing in the film industry.
Adam Sandler broke the nomination record , "scoring" 11 nominations for his work in Jack and Jill and Just Go With It, but was he able to break the record for most Razzies won?
Congratulations, or um, apologies, are in order for Sandler, who managed to sweep the Razzies, with his two films winning 10 awards. .............(more)
The complete piece is at: http://xfinity.comcast.net/articles/entertainment-eonline/20120402/b305597/?cid=hero_media
Adam Sandler, the most celebrated actor is Razzies history
from eonline:
It's the awards show that no one wants to be a part of!
The Golden Raspberry Awards, better known as the Razzies, handed out awards for the worst of the worst tonight, honoring the worst acting, directing and writing in the film industry.
Adam Sandler broke the nomination record , "scoring" 11 nominations for his work in Jack and Jill and Just Go With It, but was he able to break the record for most Razzies won?
Congratulations, or um, apologies, are in order for Sandler, who managed to sweep the Razzies, with his two films winning 10 awards. .............(more)
The complete piece is at: http://xfinity.comcast.net/articles/entertainment-eonline/20120402/b305597/?cid=hero_media
April 2, 2012
from truthdig:
Someone You Love: Coming to a Gulag Near You
Posted on Apr 2, 2012
By Chris Hedges
The security and surveillance state does not deal in nuance or ambiguity. Its millions of agents, intelligence gatherers, spies, clandestine operatives, analysts and armed paramilitary units live in a binary world of opposites, of good and evil, black and white, opponent and ally. There is nothing between. You are for us or against us. You are a patriot or an enemy of freedom. You either embrace the crusade to physically eradicate evildoers from the face of the Earth or you are an Islamic terrorist, a collaborator or an unwitting tool of terrorists. And now that we have created this monster it will be difficult, perhaps impossible, to free ourselves from it. Our 16 national intelligence agencies and army of private contractors feed on paranoia, rumor, rampant careerism, demonization of critical free speech and often invented narratives. They justify their existence, and their consuming of vast governmental resources, by turning even the banal and the mundane into a potential threat. And by the time they finish, the nation will be a gulag.
This is why the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which was contested by me and three other plaintiffs before Judge Katherine B. Forrest in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on Thursday, is so dangerous. This act, signed into law by President Barack Obama last Dec. 31, puts into the hands of people with no discernible understanding of legitimate dissent the power to use the military to deny due process to all deemed to be terrorists, or terrorist sympathizers, and hold them indefinitely in military detention. The deliberate obtuseness of the NDAA’s language, which defines “covered persons” as those who “substantially supported” al-Qaida, the Taliban or “associated forces,” makes all Americans, in the eyes of our expanding homeland security apparatus, potential terrorists. It does not differentiate. And the testimony of my fellow plaintiffs, who understand that the NDAA is not about them but about us, repeatedly illustrated this.
Alexa O’Brien, a content strategist and information architect who co-founded the U.S. Day of Rage, an organization created to reform the election process and wrest it back from corporate hands, was the first plaintiff to address the court. She testified that when WikiLeaks released 5 million emails from Stratfor, a private security firm that does work for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Marine Corps and the Defense Intelligence Agency, she discovered that the company was attempting to link her and her organization to Islamic radicals and websites as well as jihadist ideology.
Last August there was an email exchange between Fred Burton, Stratfor’s vice president for counterterrorism and corporate security and a former deputy director of the counterterrorism division of the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service, and Thomas Kopecky, director of operations at Investigative Research Consultants Inc. and Fortis Protective Services LLC. In that exchange, leaked Feb. 27 by WikiLeaks, Kopecky wrote: “I was looking into that U.S. Day of Rage movement and specifically asked to connect it to any Saudi or other fundamentalist Islamic movements. Thus far, I have only heard rumors but not gotten any substantial connection. Do you guys know much about this other than its US Domestic fiscal ideals?”? ................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/coming_to_a_gulag_near_you_20120402/
Chris Hedges: Someone You Love: Coming to a Gulag Near You
from truthdig:
Someone You Love: Coming to a Gulag Near You
Posted on Apr 2, 2012
By Chris Hedges
The security and surveillance state does not deal in nuance or ambiguity. Its millions of agents, intelligence gatherers, spies, clandestine operatives, analysts and armed paramilitary units live in a binary world of opposites, of good and evil, black and white, opponent and ally. There is nothing between. You are for us or against us. You are a patriot or an enemy of freedom. You either embrace the crusade to physically eradicate evildoers from the face of the Earth or you are an Islamic terrorist, a collaborator or an unwitting tool of terrorists. And now that we have created this monster it will be difficult, perhaps impossible, to free ourselves from it. Our 16 national intelligence agencies and army of private contractors feed on paranoia, rumor, rampant careerism, demonization of critical free speech and often invented narratives. They justify their existence, and their consuming of vast governmental resources, by turning even the banal and the mundane into a potential threat. And by the time they finish, the nation will be a gulag.
This is why the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which was contested by me and three other plaintiffs before Judge Katherine B. Forrest in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on Thursday, is so dangerous. This act, signed into law by President Barack Obama last Dec. 31, puts into the hands of people with no discernible understanding of legitimate dissent the power to use the military to deny due process to all deemed to be terrorists, or terrorist sympathizers, and hold them indefinitely in military detention. The deliberate obtuseness of the NDAA’s language, which defines “covered persons” as those who “substantially supported” al-Qaida, the Taliban or “associated forces,” makes all Americans, in the eyes of our expanding homeland security apparatus, potential terrorists. It does not differentiate. And the testimony of my fellow plaintiffs, who understand that the NDAA is not about them but about us, repeatedly illustrated this.
Alexa O’Brien, a content strategist and information architect who co-founded the U.S. Day of Rage, an organization created to reform the election process and wrest it back from corporate hands, was the first plaintiff to address the court. She testified that when WikiLeaks released 5 million emails from Stratfor, a private security firm that does work for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Marine Corps and the Defense Intelligence Agency, she discovered that the company was attempting to link her and her organization to Islamic radicals and websites as well as jihadist ideology.
Last August there was an email exchange between Fred Burton, Stratfor’s vice president for counterterrorism and corporate security and a former deputy director of the counterterrorism division of the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service, and Thomas Kopecky, director of operations at Investigative Research Consultants Inc. and Fortis Protective Services LLC. In that exchange, leaked Feb. 27 by WikiLeaks, Kopecky wrote: “I was looking into that U.S. Day of Rage movement and specifically asked to connect it to any Saudi or other fundamentalist Islamic movements. Thus far, I have only heard rumors but not gotten any substantial connection. Do you guys know much about this other than its US Domestic fiscal ideals?”? ................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/coming_to_a_gulag_near_you_20120402/
April 2, 2012
AP, via the Detroit Free Press:
The National Weather Service says last month was the warmest March on record across Michigan.
Records go back to different years in places, but weather service offices in Grand Rapids, Gaylord, Marquette and the Detroit area all report a record-breaking March. Highs got in the 70s and 80s in places.
In Grand Rapids, the average temperature of 50.7 degrees topped the previous record set in 1945 of 45.9 degrees. In suburban Detroit, the average of 50.7 degrees broke the 1945 mark of 47.9 degrees. In Traverse City, the average of 46.8 degrees surpassed the 1946 record of 41.5 degrees.
The record also was broken in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where an average temperature of 39.7 degrees topped the March 2010 record of 34.7 degrees. ...............(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.freep.com/article/20120402/NEWS06/120402013/March-weather-history-warmest-ever-in-Michigan?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE
March goes into weather history books as warmest ever in Michigan
AP, via the Detroit Free Press:
The National Weather Service says last month was the warmest March on record across Michigan.
Records go back to different years in places, but weather service offices in Grand Rapids, Gaylord, Marquette and the Detroit area all report a record-breaking March. Highs got in the 70s and 80s in places.
In Grand Rapids, the average temperature of 50.7 degrees topped the previous record set in 1945 of 45.9 degrees. In suburban Detroit, the average of 50.7 degrees broke the 1945 mark of 47.9 degrees. In Traverse City, the average of 46.8 degrees surpassed the 1946 record of 41.5 degrees.
The record also was broken in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where an average temperature of 39.7 degrees topped the March 2010 record of 34.7 degrees. ...............(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.freep.com/article/20120402/NEWS06/120402013/March-weather-history-warmest-ever-in-Michigan?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE
April 2, 2012
from the NY Times:
WASHINGTON — Law enforcement tracking of cellphones, once the province mainly of federal agents, has become a powerful and widely used surveillance tool for local police officials, with hundreds of departments, large and small, often using it aggressively with little or no court oversight, documents show.
The practice has become big business for cellphone companies, too, with a handful of carriers marketing a catalog of “surveillance fees” to police departments to determine a suspect’s location, trace phone calls and texts or provide other services. Some departments log dozens of traces a month for both emergencies and routine investigations.
With cellphones ubiquitous, the police call phone tracing a valuable weapon in emergencies like child abductions and suicide calls and investigations in drug cases and murders. One police training manual describes cellphones as “the virtual biographer of our daily activities,” providing a hunting ground for learning contacts and travels.
But civil liberties advocates say the wider use of cell tracking raises legal and constitutional questions, particularly when the police act without judicial orders. While many departments require warrants to use phone tracking in nonemergencies, others claim broad discretion to get the records on their own, according to 5,500 pages of internal records obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union from 205 police departments nationwide. ...................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/us/police-tracking-of-cellphones-raises-privacy-fears.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=all
Creeping police state
from the NY Times:
WASHINGTON — Law enforcement tracking of cellphones, once the province mainly of federal agents, has become a powerful and widely used surveillance tool for local police officials, with hundreds of departments, large and small, often using it aggressively with little or no court oversight, documents show.
The practice has become big business for cellphone companies, too, with a handful of carriers marketing a catalog of “surveillance fees” to police departments to determine a suspect’s location, trace phone calls and texts or provide other services. Some departments log dozens of traces a month for both emergencies and routine investigations.
With cellphones ubiquitous, the police call phone tracing a valuable weapon in emergencies like child abductions and suicide calls and investigations in drug cases and murders. One police training manual describes cellphones as “the virtual biographer of our daily activities,” providing a hunting ground for learning contacts and travels.
But civil liberties advocates say the wider use of cell tracking raises legal and constitutional questions, particularly when the police act without judicial orders. While many departments require warrants to use phone tracking in nonemergencies, others claim broad discretion to get the records on their own, according to 5,500 pages of internal records obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union from 205 police departments nationwide. ...................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/us/police-tracking-of-cellphones-raises-privacy-fears.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=all
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