NewsTrust - Most Recent Stories

George W Bush's $250 Million Can of Whitewash

Thu, 02 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

creators.com - By Jim Hightower - May. 02 (Opinion) - What a piece of work it is: a $250 million, 226,000-square-foot edifice on 23 acres in Dallas. His brick-and-limestone structure is certainly imposing, but once inside, you quickly see that it's a $250 million can of whitewash.

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'The Gilded Age' Statistics Corporations Don't Want Workers, or Anyone, to See

Wed, 01 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Common Dreams - By Jon Queally - May. 01 (News Report) - If there's one thing about what many are calling the "The New Gilded Age," it's that well-known corporations—not to mention less well-known, but extremely powerful ones—will fight extremely hard to keep secret just how lopsided the economic disparities have become in recent decades between low-paid workers in the society and the executive and ruling class that have reaped the words of a globalized, top-heavy economy. read ...

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Sandra Steingraber, Others Get 15 Days in Jail for Civil Disobedience Against Gas Co.

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Common Dreams - By Jon Queally - Apr. 19 (News Report) - Three upstate New York community members-cum-activists, charged with criminal trespass for blockading a gas company installation last month, were sentenced to 15 days in jail on Wednesday by a local judge in an upstate courthouse. Among those sentenced was university biology professor and author Sandra Steingraber, who delivered an impassioned statement ahead of the sentencing explaining why she was compelled to civil disobedience and why she would refuse to pay the fine levied by the judge.

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West Virginians Rally, Ask State Lawmakers to Call for End to Corporate Personhood

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0800

Common Dreams - Feb. 20 (News Report) - In West Virginia, the 2012 election brought special attention to the problem of money in politics, with the state launching a new pilot program for public funding in judicial races. Also, former Attorney General Darrell McGraw, who lost his re-election bid, reported being outspent by a margin of 6-to-1. This includes $1.6 million that went toward negative ads financed by the Center for Individual Freedom, an outside group that does not disclose its donors. “Citizens United is one of the biggest threats to our democracy that now exists,” said Gary Zuckett, executive director of West Virginia Citizen Action Group, an organization leading the planning for the rally. “Unless we can undo this wrongheaded ruling by our highest court, we are headed for corporate takeover of our elections and our government. In other words, welcome to America Inc.”

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'Alarmingly High Methane Emissions' from Natural Gas Extraction

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0800

Common Dreams - By Andrea Germanos - Jan. 03 (News Report) - New research on "alarmingly high methane emissions" brings further environmental scrutiny to natural gas extraction including fracking, and illustrates how the boom in the industry may well be a plan for climate disaster. read more

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Lobbyists Feign Budget 'Fix': Trojan Horse Filled with Corporate Tax Breaks

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Common Dreams - Nov. 14 (News Report) - As boisterous threats of a 'fiscal cliff' persist and progressive voices urge President Barack Obama to avoid falling for shortsighted solutions to illusory ultimatums, a group of corporate lobbyists and CEO's going by the name "The Campaign to Fix the Debt" are set to unleash an onslaught of campaign ads which propose bi-partisan 'compromises' to the problem, but in reality would act as a "Trojan horse concealing massive corporate tax breaks that would make our debt situation much worse

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Save Wall Street! Congress Passes JO(BS) Act

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Jim Hightower - Apr. 05 (Opinion) - Washington has finally heard the people's cries for jobs! In an urgent bipartisan push, Democrats and Republicans have joined hands across the aisle to pass the JOBS Act. In this time of "The Great Hurt" - with widespread unemployment, middle-class incomes tumbling and the price of gasoline skyrocketing - we can all applaud our stalwarts in the capital city for meeting the No. 1 need of America's hard-hit economy: deregulating Wall Street. Huh? I thought this was a jobs bill?

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As Fukushima Worsens, US Approves New Nukes

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Common Dreams - Mar. 31 (News Report) - Despite reports this week that the Fukushima nuclear situation may be even worse than previously thought, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has given approval today for two combined licenses for two nuclear reactors in South Carolina, only the second time in the last three decades that new nuclear plants have been approved in the nation. read ...

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Happy Savages: What We Did to the Marshall Islanders

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Common Dreams - By Robert Koehler - Feb. 16 (Review) - Robert C. Koehler "Thirty seconds to zero . . . six, five, four, three, two, one." "Castle Bravo" -- Bikini Atoll, March 1, 1954 Suddenly a big orange blossom fills the screen, accompanied by ukuleles and lovely — I mean Strangelovian — Polynesian music. The blossom is actually Castle Bravo, a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb blast, the largest U.S. test ever, detonated over Bikini Atoll on March 1, 1954. read ...

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'Hose Streets? Our Streets!' Belgian Firefighters Turn Their Ire (and Hoses) on Austerity

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Common Dreams - Feb. 10 (News Report) - In a great reversal from most recent street protests, Belgian firefighters today, who were out in force to voice their opposition to government proposed cuts to their retirement plans, turned their firehoses on the prime minister's office. Belgian police get wet as they guard the entrance to the cabinet office from protesting firefighters. (Photograph: KeystoneUSA-ZUMA/Rex Features) read ...

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Christmas is No Time to Talk About War and Peace

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Common Dreams - By Jim Rigby - Dec. 19 (Opinion) - When I heard the President speak to returning troops last week, my mind flashed back to an article I once wrote for our local newspaper. Each week a different member of the local clergy would write a column, and I had been asked to write the piece for Christmas. That year all I could hear was the drumbeat leading toward a war with Iraq. I racked my brain trying to think of a way to put faces on the people we were about to bomb.read more

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GM crops promote superweeds, food insecurity and pesticides, say NGOs

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By John Vidal - Oct. 19 (News Report) - Report finds genetically modified crops fail to increase yields let alone solve hunger, soil erosion and chemical-use issues Genetic engineering has failed to increase the yield of any food crop but has vastly increased the use of chemicals and the growth of "superweeds", according to a report by 20 Indian, south-east Asian, African and Latin American food and conservation groups representing millions of people. The so-called miracle crops, which were first sold in the US about 20 years ago and which are now grown in 29 countries on about 1.5bn hectares (3.7bn acres) of land, have been billed as potential solutions to food crises, climate change and soil erosion, but the assessment finds that they have not lived up to their promises. The report claims that hunger has reached "epic proportions" since the technology was developed. Besides this, only two GM "traits" have been developed on any significant scale, despite investments of tens of billions of dollars, and benefits such as drought ...

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Citibank Arrests Customers for Trying to Close Accounts

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

economicvoice.com - By Richard Henley Davis - Oct. 17 (News Report) - This notion of removing money from the banks in order to bring them down is a genuine threat to the banking industry and we can expect more arrests by banks who are using the police force as their private security to prevent a collapse in their interests through mass deposit withdrawal.

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Afghanistan and Iraq wars not worth fighting, say a third of US veterans

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - Oct. 05 (News Report) - One in three US veterans of the post-9/11 military believes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were not worth fighting, and a majority think ...Poll finds pride in military, but not for Afghanistan, Iraq wars

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'American Teacher': A Film on Education That Gets It Right

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Common Dreams - By Mark Phillips - Sep. 29 (Review) - Every policymaker should be required to see the new film “American Teacher,” which powerfully reveals the huge challenge that the country faces in attracting and keeping the best teachers to help improve public education.

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The Payroll Tax Holiday: Talk about a Ponzi Scheme!

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Common Dreams - By Wendy Mink - Sep. 09 (News Analysis) - Is President Obama trying to kill Social Security without explicitly saying so? He put Social Security "on the table" for consideration by his Deficit Commission -- even though Social Security has not contributed to creating or sustaining the deficit/debt in the first place. He kept Social Security on the table when he made a deal to delegate deficit reduction authority over entitlements to an undemocratic Super Committee. Now, in a speech reportedly about jobs, he proposed to extend and increase the ill-considered FICA tax cut he embraced last December -- a tax read more

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President Obama Joins the Cult of Economics Deniers

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Dean Baker - Aug. 15 (Opinion) - A front page story in Sunday's New York Times gave the country the bad news. President Obama is no longer paying attention to economists and economics in designing economic policy. Instead, he will do what his campaign people tell him will get him re-elected, presumably by getting lots of money from Wall Street. The article said that President Obama intends to focus on reducing government spending and cutting programmes like social security and Medicare. This is in spite of the fact that: "A wide range of economists say the administration should call for a new round of stimulus spending, as prescribed by mainstream economic theory, to create jobs and promote growth." In other words, President Obama intends to ignore the path for getting the economy back to full employment that most economists advocate. Instead, he is going to cut government spending – because his ...

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Jesus Loves Nukes But They Have to Cool It

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Common Dreams - By Abby Zimet - Aug. 04 (News Report) - The Air Force has suspended a decades-long training course, commonly dubbed Jesus Loves Nukes, that taught "ethics" to nuclear missile launchers by referencing Biblical figures like Abraham, John the Baptist and other "believers engaged in wars."

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I Counseled All My Clients To Plead Insanity

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Common Dreams - By Christopher Cooper - Jul. 29 (Opinion) - if Breivik is crazy, a great many Americans and most of the big boys in D.C. Are crazy. But if the Norwegian shooter-bomber is sane, and culpable and should be tried and sentenced (and most would suggest executed, I imagine), then we had better get started drafting juries and hiring judges because our list of mass-murderers is a long and bipartisan one.

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Crossing The Huffington Post Picket Line

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Mike Elk - Jun. 14 (News Report) - 'Unions are looking to intensify their campaign against the Huffington Post. The National Writers has recently hired on a full-time staffer to focus specifically on the campaign against the Huffington Post. Some union members are demanding that their unions put more pressure on progressives to respect the picket line. Some have floated the idea of labeling people who cross the picket line as scabs and have floated the idea of potentially cutting off funding to organizations that continue to blog at the Huffington Post

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'The War You Don't See': A Film You Won't See

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Common Dreams - By John Pilger - Jun. 11 (Special Report) - John Pilger Dear Noam, I am writing to you and a number of other friends mostly in the US to alert you to the extraordinary banning of my film on war and media, 'The War You Don't See', and the abrupt cancellation of a major event at the Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe in which David Barsamian and I were to discuss free speech, US foreign policy and censorship in the media. read more

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Are We Ruled by Second-String Psychopaths?

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By David Schwartz - Jun. 08 (Opinion) - How had our country disappeared? Vonnegut proposed that among the contributing factors was that it had been invaded – as if by the Martians – by people with a particularly frightening mental illness. People with this illness were termed psychopaths. (The term nowadays is anti-social personality disorder.) These are terms for people who are smart, personable, and engaging, but who have no consciences. They are not guided by a sense of right or wrong. They seem to be unaffected by the feelings of others, including feelings of distress caused by their actions. Straying from a decent way of treating people, or violating ethical codes causes no anxiety, the anxiety which is what causes the rest of us to moderate our more greedy impulses.

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End the Land Mine Plague

Sat, 14 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Common Dreams - By Ralph Nader - May. 14 (Advocacy) - Everyday around the world innocent people, many of them children, are killed or injured by millions of unexploded land mines and cluster bombs. Some of the cluster bomblets look like candy or a toy which attract a child in a field, orchard, schoolyard or by the roadside

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Obama Speaks on Manning and the Rule of Law

Sat, 23 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Glenn Greenwald - Apr. 23 (Opinion) - 'Obama said this when justifying Manning's treatment, 'We're a nation of laws. We don't let individuals make their own decisions about how the laws operate. He broke the law.' The impropriety of Obama's public pre-trial declaration of Manning's guilt ('He broke the law') is both gross and manifest. How can Manning possibly expect to receive a fair hearing from military officers when their Commander-in-Chief has already decreed his guilt?' Glenn Greenwald, Common Dreams

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Corporate Coup d’état Coming Soon to a City Near You

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Common Dreams - By Rania Khalek - Apr. 20 (Opinion) - Disaster capitalism is on display around the country, as legislators use the debt crisis afflicting their states as an opportunity to hollow out the public sector. In Michigan it’s being packaged as “emergency financial management” by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, who is looking to exploit an economic crisis that has left his state with a severe budget deficit. In March, Snyder signed a law granting state-appointed emergency financial managers (EFM) the ability to fire local elected officials, break teachers’ and public workers’ contracts, seize and sell assets, and eliminate services, entire cities or school districts, all without any public input. He claims these dictatorial restructuring powers will keep Michigan communities out of bankruptcy. Michigan currently has unelected EFM’s in charge of the schools in Detroit, as well as the cities of Pontiac, Ecorse, and Benton Harbor.

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