Must Read/Watch
- Jim Tankersley, Why America’s middle class is lost
- Bill Moyers interview with John R. MacArthur, Democrats Bow Down to Wall Street
- Jim Tankersley, A black hole for our best and brightest
Thought for the Day: 20 December 2014
Don’t relocate the MassDOT maintenance facility at the Rt.3/62 interchange
Local issue. If you’re not a Bedford, MA resident you can stop reading here.
Last updated Monday, 1/26/2015. Updates provided at the end of this post.
I’ve been delinquent in posting updates the past several weeks. (The Bedford Citizen is a good source for info.) Big news tonight: Success! Residents and our elected representatives convinced MassDOT not to relocate the salt shed to their proposed location.
And points to MassDOT for being responsive to citizens’ concerns.
Thought for the Day: 16 December 2014
Ah, the creative destruction that is the innovation economy
Scott Horton, The Guantanamo “Suicides”
The introductory paragraphs from Scott Horton’s investigative report in the March 2010 issue of Harper’s Magazine, “The Guantanamo “Suicides”: A Camp Delta sergeant blows the whistle“:
When President Barack Obama took office last year, he promised to “restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great.” Toward that end, the president issued an executive order declaring that the extra-constitutional prison camp at Guantánamo Naval Base “shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order.” Obama has failed to fulfill his promise. Some prisoners there are being charged with crimes, others released, but the date for closing the camp seems to recede steadily into the future. Furthermore, new evidence now emerging may entangle Obama’s young administration with crimes that occurred during the George W. Bush presidency, evidence that suggests the current administration failed to investigate seriously—and may even have continued—a cover-up of the possible homicides of three prisoners at Guantánamo in 2006.
Weekly Digest – December 14, 2014
Must Read/Watch
- Matt Taibbi, The Police in America Are Becoming Illegitimate
- C-SPAN, Senators McCain and Rockefeller on CIA Interrogations
Should Read
- Tim Egan (NYT), The War Hero and the Chicken Hawk
- Anthony Romero (NYT), Pardon Bush and Those Who Tortured
- Peter Pomerantsev (NYT), Russia’s Ideology: There Is No Truth
- Dave Johnson, Trans-Pacific Trade Talks Resume With Almost No Media Coverage
- Eileen McNamara, Democrats Cave On Deeply Flawed Spending Bill
- Matt Taibbi, Dodd-Frank Budget Fight Proves Democrats Are a Bunch of Stuffed Suits
- Garrett Hardin, The Tragedy of the Commons
- John R. MacArthur, Publisher’s Letter
Matt Taibbi on Sen. Warren’s objection to the “CRomnibus” bill
Ezra Klein has an overview of the 2015 appropriations bill, also known as the “CRomnibus” bill, in Vox. (“CRomnibus” = “CR”, as in “continuing resolution”, plus “omnibus”. The CR element of the bill is that it only funds the Dept. of Homeland Security through February.) Klein’s lead paragraph:
House and Senate negotiators have crafted a $1.013 trillion deal to fund most of the government through 2015 (well, with one exception). The bill, which weighs in at more than 1,600 pages (full text here), will avert a government shutdown. But it’s also loaded down with non-funding “policy riders” — including one that has Sen. Elizabeth Warren very, very annoyed — and is the kind of giant, secretive, backroom deal that Republicans have railed against in recent years.
Klein provides an overview and ThinkProgress lists some of the lowlights here.
On the value of public education
John Green is an author I had not heard of before seeing the quote above. (If you follow the link in the preceding sentence he’s got a video which expands – much less cynically – on his statement above.) Public education is a good thing for everyone. Invest in it. Treat students and teachers with respect.
Trans-Pacific Trade Talks Resume
From Dave Johnson, Trans-Pacific Trade Talks Resume With Almost No Media Coverage:
Shouldn’t it be a trade violation to threaten to move someone’s job to another country? Shouldn’t we negotiate trade agreements that increase people’s wages on both sides of a trade border? These are the kinds of agreements we would make if We the People were negotiating trade agreements with representatives of the working people in other countries. Unfortunately that is not the kind of trade agreements that our current trade negotiation process produces.
The secret Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations resumed this week, this time in Washington. TPP is a massive agreement that sets up new rules for over 40 percent of the global economy. It will have profound effects on our jobs, our standard of living now and in the future and our ability to make a living as a country. Oddly, though, as of Monday morning you have to read about it in Japan Times because few-to-no U.S. media outlets are covering it….
Here’s what the Japan Times reported, in “TPP talks get back underway in Washington“:
Chief negotiators from 12 countries involved in the Trans-Pacific Partnership initiative resumed negotiations in Washington after their leaders reaffirmed last month they will conclude an agreement as soon as possible.
Here are a few stories about the media blackout of this important treaty – all in the non-corporate media:
- Common Dreams, As TPP Opposition Soars, Corporate Media Blackout Deafening
- Media Matters, STUDY: Media Leave Viewers In The Dark About Trans-Pacific Partnership
- Nation of Change, Mainstream Media Blackout of the Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement
- Project Censored’s 2013 news that didn’t make the news #3 Trans-Pacific Partnership Threatens a Regime of Corporate Global Governance
- CREDO petition from February: TELL THE MEDIA: IT’S TIME TO EXPOSE THE TPP