Last night police used tear gas and billy clubs to prevent Occupy Wall Street protesters from expanding the area they control in Oakland, California. Suddenly the fact that a very small number of individual protesters had broken windows earlier in the day fell to page 100 of the news coverage. The main stream and rightwing […]
One of the major themes of the news over the past week has been the public recognition that the population of humans is now hitting the 7 billion mark. That’s a scary number, that has many worried, and with reason. Overpopulation is implicated in our environmental and our economic problems. Every one of us, from […]
Read More… from The answer to overpopulation is family planning and immigration to richer nations
While watching five minutes of one of the professional football games this past Sunday, I experienced a very bizarre TV commercial. On the surface, it had markings of a typical spot promoting tourism: people having fun doing things and eating. But right away, this commercial seemed different. The people in the ad joyously proclaimed that […]
The cover of yesterday’s Parade showed Ellen DeGeneres holding a giant lit-up pumpkin. The headline read “Happy Halloween from Ellen DeGeneres.” Inside was an article that essentially was an interview of the terminally nice Ellen. The secondary headline was: “Our Halloween treat for you—a sit-down with Ellen Degeneres, the new queen of daytime talk.” This […]
Read More… from Parade scores a hat trick of American ideology with Ellen DeGeneres Halloween issue
The death of Steve Jobs led to a tidal wave of sympathetic news coverage. Jobs the entrepreneur. Jobs the visionary. Jobs the entertainer. Jobs the philanthropist. Jobs the college dropout who showed those pointy heads that college isn’t needed (while creating thousands of jobs for the college educated and virtually none for anyone else). Jobs […]
Don’t feel embarrassed if you don’t know that a Congressional Budget Office study now confirms what so many other research studies have been telling us for years: that since 1979 there has been a redistribution of income and wealth up the economic ladder, with the poor and middle class getting less and the rich getting […]
Banks have too much cash and are taking actions to discourage savers from making more deposits. So reports The New York Times on its front page this morning. Both big national banks and small community banks are concerned that they have too many deposits. Some banks are assessing fees on deposits. Others are dropping interest […]
Read More… from Banks turn away cash: another sign we should raise taxes and stimulate economy
Over the weekend New York Times opinion columnist Joe Nocera went for a propaganda hat trick: At one time he tried to rewrite history, rehabilitate rightwing jurist Robert Bork and place blame for the politicizing of court confirmations on Democrats. In his piece titled “The Ugliness Started With Bork,” Nocera says yesterday marked the 24th […]
It has been absolutely amazing to see the uniformity of coverage by the mainstream news media of President Obama’s announcement that virtually all U.S. troops and mercenaries will be out of Iraq by the end of the year. It was as if every reporter wrote down practically rote from a government news release. I analyzed […]
It’s one bad idea after another coming from the state of Texas over the past few years: First its governor said that Texas had the legal right to secede from the United States and might do it under certain conditions. Then the state school board mandated inaccuracies be inserted into history texts for school children. […]