NewsTrust - Recent Reviews

Obama’s Budget: A Bad Bargain

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

In These Times - By Tim Carpenter, Mike Hersh - Apr. 10 (Opinion) - The White House dismisses COLA cuts as “technical changes,” but the president knows better. In 2008, candidate Obama accused his opponent, John McCain, of planning to “cut cost-of-living adjustments or raise the retirement age” for Social Security, and vowed that he would do neither. He also said, “When you look at how we should approach Social Security, I believe that cutting the benefits is not the right answer. I meet too many seniors across the country who are struggling with the limited Social Security benefits that they have.” Candidate Obama was right; President Obama is wrong.

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60 Minutes and the Billionaire Agenda: Part 1, “Counterinsurgency Cops”

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

nationofchange.org - By Richard Eskow - May. 20 (Opinion) - This Sunday’s episode of 60 Minutes was a brilliant case study in the media’s ability to manipulate the public mind. The entire hour is worth studying, if only as one of the most illuminating and sophisticated examples of media manipulation in recent memory.

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The money swamp created by Citizens United: Dark Money, corporate shell games, and SuperPAC plutocrats

Sun, 19 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Hightower Lowdown - By Jim Hightower - May. 19 (Special Report) - Forty years later, however, CREEP is back. Thanks to 2010's disastrous Citizens United ruling by a handful of raging corporatists on the Supreme Court, the moneyed elite can again buy as much political power as they want, without disclosing who's doing the buying.

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Being a Democracy Hating, Corporate Power-Defending Newspaper Owner Runs Deep in the Koch Family

Sun, 19 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Yasha Levine - May. 19 (Opinion) - There’s a rumor going around that the Koch brothers are interested in buying up the Tribune Company, which includes the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun… And there’s a lot of speculation about what would happen if they did. Some worry, and rightly so, that the Kochs—whose combined wealth makes them the biggest billionaires on the planet—would integrate the Tribune Co. with the rest of their free-market thinktank-industrial complex, and turn its newly acquired news media property into a gigantic business propaganda machine. Half the reporters at the Los Angeles Times even took a vote saying they’d quit if the Kochs bought the paper

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The 4 Big Ways That Insatiable Corporate Hunger for Profits Has Devastated American Life -- and the World Along with It

Sun, 19 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Paul Buchheit - May. 19 (Special Report) - In this dream world of global capitalism, young people are going from zero income on the farm to a few dollars a day on a 12-hour factory shift, and as a result, based on the World Bank's poverty threshold of $1.25 per day, they're no longer "in poverty." So the media piles on praise for free markets. The Economist proclaimed that "poverty is declining everywhere." The Washington Post gushed that "a billion people have been lifted from poverty through free-market competition."

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Outrageous Attacks on Supporters of Church-State Separation: Death Threats, Murdered Pets, and Vandalized Property

Sun, 19 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Adam Lee - May. 19 (Special Report) - The religious right despises the First Amendment, since it's constantly foiled their efforts to inject Christian doctrine into government. And when they've lost in court, religious conservatives in the U.S. have often waged campaigns of threats, harassment and outright violence against First Amendment plaintiffs, in the hopes of intimidating them into backing down and achieving by mob violence what they can't achieve under the law

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Obama: partisan battles in Washington holding back US economy

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - May. 20 (News) - President says US must get beyond 'short-term tactical thinking' and gives highly personal commencement address in Atlanta President Barack Obama complained on Sunday that partisan battles in Washington are holding back stronger US economic growth as he tried to recover from one of the most difficult weeks of his presidency. On a trip to Atlanta, Obama did not specifically mention the three controversies that engulfed his administration last week and raised questions as to how much of his second-term agenda he will be able to achieve. His message was clear when he told Democratic donors that an American economic revival is being held back by a "tendency in Washington to put politics ahead of policy, to put the next election ahead of the next generation, and that mindset is what we need to change." Obama's appearance in Atlanta came as he seeks to regain his footing from one of his worst weeks since taking office in early 2009. His Internal Revenue Service was found to have targeted his ...

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How the US Turned Three Pacifists Into 'Multiple Felony Saboteurs'

Sun, 19 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Fran Quigley - May. 19 (News Report) - In just ten months, the United States managed to transform an 82 year-old Catholic nun and two pacifists from non-violent anti-nuclear peace protestors accused of misdemeanor trespassing into federal felons convicted of violent crimes of terrorism. Now in jail awaiting sentencing for their acts at an Oak Ridge, TN nuclear weapons production facility, their story should chill every person concerned about dissent in the US.

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The Lost ‘Trifecta of Scandals’

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Beverly Bandler - May. 16 (Opinion) - the mainstream news media is abuzz about “the trifecta of scandals” besetting the Obama administration, a narrative that fails to assess the actual significance of the three “scandals.” They don’t measure up to the many important scandals that the media neglects

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Apple CEO Cook to Propose Tax Reform for Offshore Cash

Sun, 19 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Bloomberg - May. 19 (News) -

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"Astoundingly Disturbing": Obama Administration Claims Power to Wage Endless War Across the Globe

Fri, 17 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - May. 17 (News Analysis) - A Pentagon official predicted Thursday the war against al-Qaeda and its affiliates could last up to 20 more years. The comment came during a Senate hearing revisiting the Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF, enacted by Congress days after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. At the hearing, Pentagon officials claimed the AUMF gives the president power to wage endless war anywhere in the world, including in Syria, Yemen and the Congo. "This is the most astounding and most astoundingly disturbing hearing that I've been to since I've been here," said Independent Sen. Angus King of Maine. "You guys have essentially rewritten the Constitution here today." We play excerpts of Thursday's Senate hearing and our recent interview with Jeremy Scahill, author of the new bestseller, "Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield."

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The IRS and the Real Scandal

Sat, 18 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

nationofchange.org - By Robert Reich - May. 18 (Opinion) - Despite a growing number of billionaires and multi-millionaires using every tax dodge imaginable – laundering their money through phantom corporations and tax havens — the IRS’s budget has been cut by 17 percent since 2002, adjusted for inflation. To manage the $594.5 million in additional cuts required by the sequester, the agency will furlough each of its more than 89,000 employees for at least five days this year.

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Popular Resistance Is Percolating Across the Country -- Inspiring Activism That the Corporate Media Always Ignores

Sat, 18 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Kevin Zeese, Margaret Flowers - May. 18 (News Report) - The heart of the conflict faced in the United States is the inequity of an unfair economy supported by a corrupt two party system. This week there was a very creative protest in New York City against the world’s richest man, Carlos Slim of Mexico. He’s made his billions with the help of government allowing a monopoly on phone service resulting in Slim gouging the public.

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Climate Tipping Point? Concentration of Carbon Dioxide Tops 400 ppm For First Time in Human History

Mon, 13 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - May. 13 (News Report) - The 400 ppm threshold has been an important marker in U.N. climate change negotiations, widely recognized as a dangerous level that could drastically worsen human-caused global warming. We speak to leading climate scientist Michael Mann, distinguished professor of meteorology at Penn State University and author of the recent book, "The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines." Mann warns, "We have to go several million years back in time to find a point in Earth’s history where CO2 was as high as it is now.

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Annise Parker: The Modern American Boomtown

Sat, 18 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Annise Parker - May. 18 (Opinion) - Houston's mayor—an openly gay Democrat friendly to business—talks about why her city is the country's fastest growing and most diverse.

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Commuter train derails in Conn.

Sat, 18 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

CNN - By Greg Botelho, Rob Frehse - May. 18 (News Report) - A Metro-North commuter train derailed Friday evening in southwestern Connecticut, police said.

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Cisco Thrives On U.S. Strength And A Steadily Improving Global Economy

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Forbes - By Agustino Fontevecchia, Forbes Staff - May. 16 (News Report) - Cisco posted third quarter earnings after the bell on Wednesday, beating estimates and delivering a ninth consecutive quarter of “record” revenues. Shares in the large networking and communications firm surged more than 5% in post-market trading.

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Genetically Modified Democracy: Monsanto and Congress Move to Stomp on States’ Rights

Sat, 18 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

nationofchange.org - By Ronnie cummins - May. 18 (News Report) - the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) that Monsanto has begun secretly lobbying its Congressional allies to attach one or more “Monsanto Riders” or amendments to the 2013 Farm Bill that would preempt or prohibit states from requiring labels on genetically engineered (GE) foods.

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Horses as Farm Equipment

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By By ANNE RAVER - May. 16 (Special Report) - Horses as Farm Equipment

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Survey finds 97% climate science papers agree warming is man-made

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - May. 16 (News) - Overwhelming majority of peer-reviewed papers taking a position on global warming say humans are causing it Our team of citizen science volunteers at Skeptical Science has published a new survey in the journal Environmental Research Letters of over 12,000 peer-reviewed climate science papers, as the Guardian reports today . This is the most comprehensive survey of its kind, and the inspiration of this blog's name: Climate Consensus – the 97%. The survey In 2004, Naomi Oreskes performed a survey of 928 peer-reviewed climate papers published between 1993 and 2003, finding none that rejected the human cause of global warming. We decided that it was time to expand upon Oreskes' work by performing a keyword search of peer-reviewed scientific journal publications for the terms 'global warming' and 'global climate change' between the years 1991 and 2011. Our team agreed upon definitions of categories to put the papers in: explicit or implicit endorsement of human-caused global warming, no ...

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Everything Is Rigged, Continued: EU Raids Oil Companies in Price-Fixing Probe

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Rolling Stone - By Matt Taibbi - May. 16 (News Report) - According to numerous reports, the European Commission regulators yesterday raided the offices of oil companies in London, the Netherlands and Norway as part of an investigation into possible price-rigging in the oil markets. The targeted companies include BP, Shell and the Norweigan company Statoil. The Guardian explains that officials believe that oil companies colluded to manipulate pricing data:

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OpEdNews - Article: NRA 'Charity' Ransacks 'Enlightened Self-interest'

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Op Ed News - May. 15 (Opinion) - Where else would the NRA look to justify its non-profit status but public service? And what higher American morality is their than Enlightened Self-interest? Who knew what a modern lobbyist must do to justify its existence on a higher plane?

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Eric Holder’s abdication

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Dana Milbank - May. 16 - As the nation’s top law enforcement official, Eric Holder is privy to all kinds of sensitive information. But he seems to be proud of how little he knows. Why didn’t his Justice Department inform the Associated Press, as the law requires, before pawing through reporters’ phone records ? ...

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The Coming GOP Civil War Over Climate Change

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

National Journal - May. 15 (Opinion) -

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Cyclists Aren't 'Special,' and They Shouldn't Play by Their Own Rules - Sarah Goodyear - The Atlantic Cities

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

theatlanticcities.com - May. 15 (Opinion) -

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