The Notion

Palin's Pet Has Taliban Ties?

By Laura Flanders

One week before Election Day, the special election to fill a vacant House seat in New York's North Country is heating up. It's a three-way split, pitting a Republican, a Democrat, and a Conservative against one another. It's close.

And the conservative on the ticket has the kind of support the Democrat running against him must love.

Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman has already received the backing of Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the anti-public-spending Club for Growth. On Monday he was endorsed by another beauty: Dana Rohrabacher, the senior Orange County (CA) Republican who began his career as a speechwriter for President Reagan. Said Rohrabacher "We don't need Tweedle-Dum or Tweedle-Dee, we need Hoffman. He's not afraid to stand up and speak the truth."

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October 29, 2009

Bombings in Baghdad Threaten DC's Security.

By Laura Flanders

Health Care Hoax Worse Than Balloon Boy

By Laura Flanders

An attention grab that held millions of Americans transfixed. A story that seemed to be about life in the balance. It dominated the airwaves, the social networks, held Americans in its clutch. And then it turned out to have been nothing but a hoax. A play for attention that distracted the entire country.

Now that the Balloon Boy's story is blown, can we call out the health care hoax?

The anti-health care lobby is taking all our attention hostage and a nation's hopes (and votes) for quality health care are floating away.

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October 20, 2009

Geithner's All Ears for the Debt Cartel

By Laura Flanders

Months ago, a former chief economist at the IMF called it mind control. Talking to Simon Johnson of the Atlantic Monthly, he explained that one of the most alarming truths laid bare by the economic crash was that the finance industry had effectively captured the thinking of government.

"That's going too far," said reasonable people. "This is no Banana Republic run by crony cartels."

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October 13, 2009

Punch in the Streets, Not in the Suites at G-20

By Laura Flanders

The G20 summit wrapped up in Pittsburgh Friday with pledges but little punch. Except in the streets.

On climate change, world leaders vowed "strong action" and on the economy, "balanced economic growth." The summit endorsed granting more voting rights at the IMF and World Bank to ‘underrepresented' countries like CHINA. With a billion people and the world's second largest economy -- China may budge up from having 3.6% of all votes.

Underrepresented booming countries may get a bigger voice in global finance. Nice. But under-represented people? Well there's the rub.

Around 200 people were arrested during the two-day Pittsburgh summit.  Heavy policing seems to be the only plan world leaders have come up with for shutting reality out.

Reality, for those in the streets, not the suites, of the world, is a whole new economy -- way more than a downturn -- and the prospect of long-term, possibly permanent, unemployment.

Read the papers, and the stats are all there. In the US, job seekers now outnumber job openings six to one. Official unemployment stands at 9.7 percent, its highest level in 26 years. If you're a teenager, it's over 25 percent. No reason there to shun protest for fear of ruining your job prospects, they're grim and only getting grimmer. That's if radicals like Paul Craig Roberts, a former officer of the Reagan Administration, are to be believed.

If measured according to the methodology used when he was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Roberts says "the unemployment rate today in the US is above 20%. Moreover, there is no obvious way of reducing it."

Consumer spending -- the engine that drove 70 % of the US economy and by extension much of the world's -- isn't coming back. And that's just the way it's going to be, President Obama's chief economic adviser Larry Summers told the BBC (my sister, actually) in Pittsburgh.

"The US can't, shouldn't and won't continue to experience the consumption-led growth of the past few years." said Summers. And the world -- and we -- should just adjust...

The message is pledge-on! Endorse "strong action" on climate and "balanced growth." But all those poor people out of work? They'll just have to adjust.

While banks are doling out cash by the millions to kill any new regulation of Wall St. (which clearly has its heart set on making another buck off all that poverty...) There is one part of the economy that seems actually to be getting stimulated: Policing. If ever civil society finds a voice and decides actually to wield it, they'll be ready. How else to reign in reality, for lawd's sake?

Laura Flanders, is the host of GRITtv which broadcasts weekdays on satellite TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415 Free Speech TV) on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Follow GRITtv or GritLaura on Twitter.com.

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September 29, 2009

OOPS! The ACORN Ban Could Snag Lockheed & Catholic Charities

By Laura Flanders

Continuing the GOP's attack on the poor people's organizing group ACORN, the House and Senate -- by wide margins -- have voted to bar ACORN from receiving federal funding on account of fraudulent activity.

Let's hope the legislators enjoy their gloat and then get right back to business.  Passed in a flurry of bloviating bluster, The Defund ACORN law is written so broadly that it just could come in very handy.

Rep. Alan Grayson (D of Florida) has already asked the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) to find out which other contractors might be caught in the ACORN ban-net.

When it comes to fraud felons receiving federal funds -- Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman top the list, with 20 fraud cases between them. Where military contractors go, the cash-for-killers at Blackwater (now XE) are rarely far behind. (Indeed, see Jeremy Scahill's story.) And then there's Halliburton and the magically disappeared federal cash for troop services and Iraq reconstruction. (Has anyone seen that $9 billion? )

Fraud by recipients of the $750 billion financial bailout program is bound to show up soon. Earlier this year, federal investigators said they had opened 20 criminal probes into possible securities fraud, tax violations, insider trading and other crimes by TARP recipients.

If Congress - including scores of Democrats --  can get this hot and bothered over the $50 million ACORN's supposed to have received over the past 15 years they're going to become hysterical about the BILLIONS received by banks in the blink of a brokers' eyelid.

Not to be left out, several supposedly faith-based groups, recipients of federal grants, currently stand accused of misspending taxpayer cash to cover for child-molesting clergy.

To name just one, in at least two cities Catholic Charities stands accused of using federal funds to settle or cover up sex abuse charges, but that didn't stop Catholic Charities from receiving a federal government contract this August for $100 million to work with victims of natural disasters.

Bankers, brokers, bomb-makers, and let us not forget the child molesters...  This could all get very interesting very fast. I can hardly wait to turn on the television. Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck. Who's going to be first with the outrage?

The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv which broadcasts weekdays on satellite TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415 Free Speech TV) on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Follow GRITtv or GritLaura on Twitter.com.

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September 25, 2009

Wangari Maathai: A US Resource War?

By Laura Flanders

Wangari Maathai makes the relationship between needs and wars so clear that even the Nobel committee (which awarded her the peace prize in '04) got it. Violent disparities in access to resources, lead to violence. The wars right now destroying people and the planet are wars over the stuff of life: land and water and fuel.

If we can see the link between conflict and resource strain in Kenya and Congo and Brazil, why are we surprised that here at home, anger and tension-in-the-air is rising?

Extreme poverty, bankruptcies, defaults, debt--they're all on the rise for the majority of Americans, even as a tiny minority grow their share of all wealth, and grab more than their fair share of the scarce resource that is the government's care and attention.

The system is stressed and so are the people. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey found the average family premium for health insurance rose to $13,375 last year, a jump of 5% even as inflation fell. That makes for an obscene rise of 131% over the past ten years. No wonder, that at the same time the number of Americans without any health coverage rose to 46.3 million.

Healthcare is a scarce resource, and people's fears for themselves and their kids are very real. 

The Census Bureau shows that the child poverty rate rose to 19.0% last year. That translates to 14.1 million children living in poverty in the richest nation in the world. By some estimates, that could be 26.6% by the end of 2009.

Income inequality is at an all time high. Resources are strapped. Are we really surprised that fear -- and gun-sales -- are rising?

Maathai's Green Belt movement believes in better environmental stewardship and better sharing will reduce war. She talks about it on GRITtv this week: "There is no way to have peace without equity."

Her Green Belt movement has planted 40 billion trees since its founding and aims to plant another nine billion trees this year.

What would be the US equivalent of all that tree-planting?

The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv which broadcasts weekdays on satellite TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415 Free Speech TV) on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Follow GRITtv or GritLaura on Twitter.com.
 

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September 24, 2009

Where's the Norma Rae of Healthcare?

By Laura Flanders

Crystal Lee Sutton died last week. You might know her by her "other" name. It was Sutton's story that inspired the film Norma Rae, starring Sally Field who won an Oscar, a Golden Globe and Best Actress award at Cannes for her portrayal of Sutton, a North Carolina union organizer in the early 1970s. In an act of defiance Sutton wrote the word "UNION" on a piece of cardboard and stood up on her work table at the J.P. Stevens textile plant. Her co-workers followed and turned their machines off in solidarity.

After hearing of her death, Field said that, "portraying Crystal Lee in Norma Rae not only elevated me as an actress, but as a human being."

Sutton fought for the working poor much of her life. What she also had to fight for, it turns out, was healthcare. After being diagnosed with cancer a few years back, she was told that her insurance wouldn't cover the potentially life saving medication she needed. By the time the approval came through Sutton's cancer had spread.

Speaking of her own predicament, Sutton said, "How in the world can it take so long to find out [whether they would cover the medicine or not] when it could be a matter of life and death. It is almost like, in a way, committing murder."

She died at 68.

It makes all the talk of death panels, a government takeover, and socialized medicine sound rather silly, doesn't it? Cancer's bad enough. But at least it's an equal opportunity killer. Our current for-profit insurance system isn't benign, and there's nothing equal about it. Is there someone out there somewhere standing on a table with a cardboard sign: 'HEALTHCARE'? We'd love to make a movie about it.

Laura Flanders is the host of GRITtv which broadcasts weekdays on satellite TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415 Free Speech TV) on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Follow GRITtv or GritLaura on Twitter.com.

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September 17, 2009

Will Drones Make General Atomics the next Blackwater?

By Laura Flanders

A US drone firing missiles into a village in northern Pakistan killed at least 19 people over the weekend. The targets were militants, said the US military. The victims included six dead children, said a local tribal elder.

"Suspected US drone kills Suspected Taliban Commander." That's becoming the stuff of very suspect news stories. The reporting is so weak there's almost nothing confirmed except that the killer operator is far away in front of a computer screen.

Suspected killing of suspected people covered by unsuspicious media?  It would be sci-fi if it weren't so here-now, and it's only going to get more so.

The Democratic administration just made a big deal of cutting the cumbersome F-22 fighter jet. "We don't need it any more," said the President. What he didn't say is that the defense department is seeking $3.5 billion for unmanned aerial vehicles a.k.a. "drones." Funding is expected to increase to $55 billion by 2020. The air force is currently training more drone operators than fighter and bomber pilots.

Drones have been around since the US-led NATO war on the former Yugoslavia. Since '06, drones have launched hundred of missiles along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border killing as many as 700 civilians according to Pakistani officials.

Forbes magazine's "king of the armed drone makers" is a little known company called General Atomics whose founder James Neal Blue came up with the drone as a way of defeating Soviet-backed Sandinistas by blowing up oil pipelines in Nicaragua. He's a fervent anti-communist and quite possibly the next Erik Prince -- only his mercenaries aren't Blackwater's flesh and blood killers, but conveniently bloodless machines.

General Atomics is small by defense industry standards, but it has a lot of friends in Washington. Between 2000 and 2005, GA was the top corporate sponsor of privately funded congressional travel. So perhaps it's no surprise, there's little resistance to more drones in the US arsenal.

Drones are not cheap -- between $10 million and $12 million apiece per GA "Reaper." Their success rate is widely disputed. They kill civilians and even General David Petraeus admits, they make people hate us. But cynical political calculus is on General Atomics' side. 

President Obama has a problem.  Every American military commander wants more troops, but resistance among foot soldiers is growing and maybe, someday - someday - the president's anti-war base will make itself heard.

How to heed the commanders and quiet the critics simultaneously? Welcome to the super drone bonanza. The pilotless drone is the military's version of cash for very clunky policy.

The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv which broadcasts weekdays on satellite TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415 Free Speech TV) on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Follow GRITtv or GritLaura on Twitter.com.
 

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August 26, 2009

MSNBC & FOX: Posing Divided, United They Stand

By Laura Flanders

There are days when one's reminded why one works in independent media. August 1st was one of those days, when the New York Times ran a front page media story that might as well have been headlined: GE and Fox Hush Hosts For Profits.

In a nutshell, Keith Olbermann of MSNBC and Bill O'Reilly of Fox have been going at it. For months, Olbermann's called the Fox host out for his lies and smears, regularly dubbing him "Worst Person in the World," while O'Reilly's raised questions about MSNBC's corporate owners, General Electric.

The on-air feud was good for ratings. It wasn't even bad journalism, for these kind of programs. Olbermann held Fox's O'Reilly to account for dubbing Dr. George Tiller "baby killer" in the run up to Tiller's assassination. O'Reilly sent a producer to a GE shareholder's meeting to raise questions about company business in Iran.

The feud wasn't bad for ratings, but it was perceived as a potential threat to other corporate interests.  And so it was that some time this May, the chairman of General Electric (which owns MSNBC), and Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of News Corporation (which owns Fox News), were brought into a "summit meeting" for CEOs where Charlie Rose played peacemaker.

Said one General Electric employee quoted by the Times, calling the two into line meant, "Fewer headaches on the corporate side."

The sniping's stopped. There's been virtually none of it since the deal took effect on June 1. When Glenn Beck called the President a racist, for example, commentators criticized Beck, but they obediently avoided going after the network that pays him.

It's just another reminder why we don't see stinging reporting, say, of General Electric's investment in the weapons trade, or the healthcare business, or News Corp's dealings with the Chinese government.

Posing divided, united they stand. In the all-about profits media business, ideological rifts are fine for the purposes of gaining notoriety and building audience. Stir things up and deepen divisions among parties, politicians, workers, little people. But go after business interests -- and that's another story. Then, the same media moguls who profit off our social divides sing corporate Kumbaya when their profits are in peril.

Making independent media's tough. It's hard to fund and it's tempting to think there must be a better way. Wouldn't it be easier if some corporation paid the bills?

Not exactly.

The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv which broadcasts weekdays on satellite TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415 Free Speech TV) on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Follow GRITtv or GritLaura on Twitter.com. 

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August 4, 2009