Scotus-Pocus: The Amend Movement Gains Momentum. Ibid the Freedom Flotilla...

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KBOO
Program:: 
Air date: 
Tue, 06/21/2011 - 12:00am
Interviews with Amend Movement's Rick Staggenborg & AG Kroger's Ast. Tony Green on 'false Feds'.

First, let's roust Corporate Personhood and the rest of the Scotus-Pocus

movetoamend.org/areas-focus/move-amend/building-democracy-movement, moving right along...

The Pentagon's Fast and Furious SpendingYou'll be only too happy to shell out $600 dollars for a toilet when you hear this one:   Pentagon spending is notably 'Fast and Furious', but sports sponsorships?   Nascar?

For, Lo, these past months Democratic  Representative of Minnesota, Betty McCollum has been planning her next move in an effort to slash Pentagon spending for NASCAR and other sports sponsorships.   The House recently “voted to eliminate funding for homeless veterans, slash community health centers serving low-income families and pass a fiscal year 2011 budget that would force 800,000 Americans to lose their jobs.  Yet taxpayer-funded sponsorship of NASCAR racing teams was protected.    McCollum questions whether the U.S. military should be spending hundreds of millions of dollars on sponsorship deals for sports including stock car racing, professional fishing and pro wrestling at a time when the nation is running large deficits. Military officials and congressional supporters say the sponsorships help with recruitment.

  FTC probes possible oil market manipulationDemocrats who have alleged market abuses are a factor behind the recent  petrol price spikes have been excoriated for being 'conspiracy theorists'  - and worse.  But as is the case with so many alleged "conspiracies", this one appears to be based on factual evidence.  The Federal Trade Commission is probing whether oil companies and other industries might have engaged in anti-competitive or manipulative practices or provided false information to federal officials. Y’uh think???

House to vote on repealing election commission

Set up after Bush-Gore sleight-of-hand in Florida,   HR 672 would repeal the Election Assistance Commission  set up in the ashes of the 2000  fiasco.  The commission was set up under the Help America Vote Act approved in 2002.  Harper says repealing the commission would save $14 million a year and that it can safely be repealed because the commission's work has been completed…Which is true, actually, if the purpose of the commission was to implant GW in the White House….

  ISPs Team Up With NSA To Monitor Internet Traffic

The National Security Agency is working in conjunction with Internet service providers to monitor traffic, with the goal of preventing cyberattacks against defense firms by foreign enemies.   Translation:  The Pentagon paid ISP’s a sum almost as obscene and clandestine as a Southern politician’s social life.  The NSA uses its magical tools to scan email and other digital traffic, seeking to identify any malicious programs that may be used to attack companies with defense contracts. 

 

The Dark side of Growth

American history 101 can be summarized in one word: Growth.  And yet few scholars have questioned the wisdom of the philosophy and its concurrent policy-making.  A new report predicts the Portland  metro area will not  recover the number of jobs it had before the recession until mid 2014 .  Economists say U.S. cities must keep making that kind of “progress” to pull the nation back to employment levels enjoyed before December 2007.  Not fast, friend-o…”progress” only exists within in a given architecture, a context of some sort.  And in the current geopolitical context, for America, Zero Growth would be “progress”.

 

 Oregon House votes down online charter school bill;

Yesterday in Salem Oregon the State dodged a  dirty bullet dipped in pathos and thinly disguised concern for the rural poor.  The Oregon House rejected – 30-30 - a bill loosening enrollment restrictions on online charter schools.   The action caused enough of a political uproar to at least temporarily halt further action on a large package of education bills, and it potentially slowed the end of the legislative session. But best of all, it banjaxed the creeping privatization of children’s minds.

 

 It's time for Clarence Thomas to resign.

A New York Times expose published Sunday details the improper ties between Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and influential rightwing funder and activist Harlan Crow. And Crow is a major contributor to conservative causes and a stalwart supporter of Thomas. In past years he reportedly gave Thomas' wife, Ginni Thomas, $500,000 to exploit the Citizens United decision and start a shadowy, Tea Party-related group called Liberty Central. He gave Thomas a bible (estimated value $15,000) that once belonged to Frederick Douglass, and allegedly provided the Supreme Court Justice with access to his yacht and private jet.    As if that wasn't enough, the New York Times has revealed that Thomas may have improperly solicited a multi-million dollar donation from Crow to benefit one of his own pet projects near his birth place in a remote coastal community outside Savanna, Georgia.

waht's Wrong with the Man?

And described differences between him and the Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu as “purely tactical”. Obama made the comments at a Democratic “Friends of Israel” event where he was fundraising for his upcoming 2012 campaign for a second 4 year presidential term. Oh, and just in passing, he characterized the Freedom Flotilla as a “terrorist” undertaking.

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