Did You Know
Did You Know
Michael Flynn & the FBI Setup
JOHN KIRIAKOU: The case of the fallen Trump official shows exactly what is wrong with our criminal justice system ... we know now that the FBI agents set him up ... A 2012 study by ProPublica found that the Justice Department wins 98.2 percent of its cases, almost all as a result of a plea deal. ... So, what strategies do prosecutors use to ensure a conviction? ... Charge Stacking - say mortgage fraud --- add a couple of conspiracy charges and maybe a charge each of wire fraud and mail fraud --- 50 years in prison, rather than five --- plea deal? Venue Shopping --- Prosecutors will seek to charge a defendant in the federal district where he or she is most likely to be convicted...
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May 27, 2020, 4:18pm
Did You Know
America Abstains: Millions of Voters Have Lost Faith in US Democracy
Gabriella Novello: If voter turnout is indicative of a democracy’s health, then the US is clearly ailing. Only slightly more than half of all eligible voters cast their ballots in presidential elections, which is far below the turnout seen in peer countries. ... While systematic voter suppression certainly plays a role in this anemic performance, millions of Americans don’t vote because they have lost faith in the system or believe that elections are rigged. ... Other reasons identified in the report (“The 100 Million Project: The Untold Story of American Non-Voters,”) include a real or perceived lack of knowledge about the candidates and issues, disappointment in choices, and a belief that their votes do not matter...
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May 21, 2020, 3:32pm
Did You Know
In Colorado, Democrats Are Listening to Health Industry Lobbyists and Killing the Public Option
Andrew Perez: Colorado Democrats said they were going to pass a public option this year. And then they gave into health care industry propaganda and lobbying. ... more than ninety lobbyists reported involving themselves in the legislative process by opposing the bill at the Colorado capitol in February and March, according to state records. That’s almost one lobbyist for each of the one hundred lawmakers in the Colorado General Assembly. ... The country’s top health insurers — UnitedHealth, Anthem, Cigna, and CVS Health (they own Aetna) — all lobbied against the state public option. ... Holding off on demanding a public option for a year not only leaves thousands of people at the mercy of private health insurance corporations during the pandemic, but it also provides the industry way more time to message against any future bill...
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May 9, 2020, 4:26pm
Did You Know
The Disconnect Between the Stock Market and the Real Economy Is Destroying Our Lives
Hamilton Nolan: Stocks are the wall that protects the rich from the consequences of this crisis ... The glaring disconnect between the real economy, of working humans with jobs and bills to pay, and the investor class economy, embodied by the stock market, is one of the most brutal and devious political issues of this age of crisis in which we’re living. ... the capital markets are subject to all manner of trickery and intervention that can insulate them—for a while, at least—from what is happening in the world at large ... “Frankly, just financial engineering.” ... by the time the government’s rescue packages are all tallied up, they could add up to $5 trillion of zero-interest loans to big business ... “Insiders are going to sell off their stock and make a killing,” ... “and long term investors will take the loss.”...
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May 5, 2020, 2:59pm
Did You Know
Human Lab Rats: The U.S. Government’s Secret History of Grisly Experiments
John W. Whitehead: I have never known any government to put the best interests of its people first, and this COVID-19 pandemic is no exception. ... Now this isn’t intended to be a debate over whether COVID-19 is a legitimate health crisis or a manufactured threat. ... it is possible for the virus to be both a genuine menace to public health and a menace to freedom. ... Yet we can’t afford to overlook the fact that governments the world over, including the U.S. government, have unleashed untold horrors upon the world in the name of global conquest, the acquisition of greater wealth, scientific experimentation, and technological advances, all packaged in the guise of the greater good...
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Apr 23, 2020, 2:00pm
Did You Know
Essential Work
Stephanie Luce: ... work must produce the goods and services we need to survive it should also develop our selves ... the pandemic exposes the reality of “essential work”: what we really need to do in society to take care of ourselves .... We need food and shelter, health care, education, and social work. We need recreation, music and arts. We need purpose and we need space and time to pursue our passions. ... Many of the workers who serve our basic needs, such as farmworkers, grocery store workers, nurse’s aides, home care workers, delivery workers and EMTs, are not rewarded ... “essential work” is also that which allows us to develop our collective human capacity...
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Apr 17, 2020, 3:34pm
Did You Know
Your Boss Is Spying on You
Ben Burgis: With millions of people now working from their homes, frantic bosses are buying high-tech surveillance software to track their employees’ every keystroke. ... workplaces are sites of tyranny ... Software makers such as InterGuard, Time Doctor, Teramind, VeriClock, innerActiv, ActivTrak, and Hubstaff have seen increased demand since the beginning of the pandemic. ... Each provides minute-by-minute, keystroke-by-keystroke monitoring as workers complete tasks in what should be the privacy of their own homes...
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Apr 14, 2020, 3:19pm
Did You Know
Affirmative Action for White People
Barry Spector: Most whites have been able to live out their lives completely unaware of the long term, institutional factors that have kept people of color down – and themselves up. ... From the very beginning, the essential core of the white American psyche was formed in opposition to the imagined Others of the world: those who threatened the innocent community from the outside (Native Americans) and those whose presence on the inside (African slaves) who, by their very existence, constantly called that sense of innocence into question. ... Because of its innate contradictions, white identity was and always has been highly unstable, and it required the construction of an entire mythology to hold it together. Very early on, the notion of privilege became one of the prime ways in which this was accomplished...
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Apr 13, 2020, 2:08pm
Did You Know
The Plan Is to Save Capital and Let the People Die
Hamilton Nolan: Whether Americans know it or not, their government is not working for them. Their government is working on behalf of capital. Humans are now a mere second-order, instrumental factor to be considered based on how it affects capital. In this perilous time, capital must be protected and nurtured, and we must draw resources from our entire society in order to help capital survive, in the same way that the body will draw blood from other organs to save the brain. ... People can be sacrificed—capital is irreplaceable. ... The true heroes of this crisis, from the perspective of those in charge, will be the private equity firms that rush in to buy up distressed businesses...
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Apr 6, 2020, 2:05pm
Did You Know
The profit system is sabotaging the struggle against the coronavirus
Patrick Martin: The New York Times detailed Sunday how financial operations in the medical equipment market blocked an initiative by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to build a stockpile of ventilators, which are now in short supply throughout the United States. ... There are similar factors behind the shortage of N95 masks ... There has been mounting criticism of 3M and other providers of N95 masks for withholding supplies of materials and finished masks from the market, and for permitting price-gouging by their distributors. ... Two other critical components needed to combat the COVID-19 pandemic—mass testing and the development of a vaccine—have also been constrained by the profit motive and the division of the world into competing nation-states...
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Mar 31, 2020, 12:11pm
Did You Know
The Coronavirus Pandemic Makes the Case for Criminal Justice Reform
Akela Lacy: The rapid spread of the novel coronavirus in the United States is expediting criminal justice reforms that advocates have pushed for decades. At least nine prosecutors are now fast-tracking reforms to reduce the number of incarcerated people kept in conditions that can speed the rate of infection, and to stop new prosecutions of low level nonviolent offenses. ... A 2016 report showed that just under 40 percent of people in state and federal prisons were behind bars with no compelling public safety rationale, meaning they could be released while still keeping communities safe ... “We need to think of our jails and our prisons as part of our community” ...
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Mar 28, 2020, 2:32pm
Did You Know
Is the DNC Once Again Orchestrating the Defeat of a Socialist Candidate?
Marjorie Cohn: In 1944, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) ensured that socialist Henry Wallace would not succeed Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) as president. Is history repeating itself in 2020? ... Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders received the most votes in the first three primary elections. After centrist Joe Biden scored his first primary win, the DNC consolidated the Democratic Party establishment around him. ... Sanders: Where is the power in America? ... “Who owns the media? Who owns the economy? Who owns the legislative process? Why do we give tax breaks to billionaires and not raise the minimum wage? Why do we pump up the oil industry while a half a million people are homeless in America?”...
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Mar 17, 2020, 3:30pm
Did You Know
Big Pharma Prepares to Profit From the Coronavirus
Sharon Lerner: “Pharmaceutical companies view Covid-19 as a once-in-a-lifetime business opportunity” ... “the worse the pandemic gets, the higher their eventual profit.” ... During the current crisis, pharmaceutical makers may have even more leeway than usual because of language industry lobbyists inserted into an $8.3 billion coronavirus spending package, passed last week, to maximize their profits from the pandemic ... The final aid package not only omitted language that would have limited drug makers’ intellectual property rights, it specifically prohibited the federal government from taking any action if it has concerns that the treatments or vaccines developed with public funds are priced too high...
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Mar 13, 2020, 3:38pm
Did You Know
Cookie Monster: the Nuts and Bolts of Online Tracking
Rob Larson: Big Tech has become notorious for its hoarding of its users’ personal data, collected with great breadth and down to minute details. ... But Google is inarguably the greediest of these companies in its data collection, to an extent that can surprise even jaded users. ... But the real turning point was the acquisition of the major display ad agency DoubleClick, which brought pivotal changes to the company’s “cookies.” ... the company gained “an omniscient cookie that no other company could match.” As a user browses, the cookie: develops into a rather lengthy log that provides a fully fleshed out profile of the user’s interests…virtually all of it compiled by stealth. ... beside using the mega-cookie to record our browsing history, combined with our search logs and Gmail contents, Google “Now Tracks Your Credit Card Purchases and Connects Them to Its Online Profile of You”...
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Mar 9, 2020, 3:28pm
Did You Know
Corporations are Human Creations. We Can't Let Them Threaten Our Survival.
David Korten: Most large corporations are captives of financial markets that drive the pursuit of short-term financial gain with no concern for the social or environmental consequences. Not only do they fail to serve the common good, but they are also driving us all toward civilizational collapse. Indeed, they are driving us toward human self-extinction. ... These conditions create an imperative for urgent structural change. ... Current rules governing corporate conduct encourage and reward what should be treated as criminal behavior. ... They allow corporations to reap the rewards of their decisions without bearing the full costs. For example, when they evade paying taxes, they evade paying their fair share of the costs of infrastructure, education, or other essentials of doing business...
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Mar 7, 2020, 12:10pm
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