Tag: Opinion

In the pantheon of billionaires without shame, Michael Bloomberg, the Wall Street banker-turned-business-press-lord-turned-mayor, is now secure at the top. What is so offensive is that someone who abetted Wall Street greed, and benefited as much as anyone from it, has no compunction about ruthlessly repressing those who dare exercise their constitutional “right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” that he helped to create.

You would think that a former partner at the investment bank Solomon Brothers, which originated mortgage-backed securities, a man who then partnered with Merrill Lynch in the high-speed computerized trading that has led to so much financial manipulation, would have some sense of his own culpability. Or at least that someone whose Wall Street career left him with a net worth of $19.5 billion would grasp the deep irony of his being the instrument for smashing Occupy Wall Street, the internationally acknowledged symbol of opposition to corporate avarice.

But only in America is the arrogance of the superrich so perfectly concealed by the pretense of democracy that the 12th richest man in the nation can suppress dissent against corporate rapacity and expect his brutal actions to be viewed not as a means of preserving his own class privilege but as bureaucratically necessary to providing sanitary streets.

E.J. Dionne, Jr.: The Easiest Way to Cut the Deficit

Here is a surefire way to cut $7.1 trillion from the deficit over the next decade. Do nothing.

That’s right. If Congress simply fails to act between now and Jan. 1, 2013, the tax cuts passed under President George W. Bush expire, $1.2 trillion in additional budget cuts go through under the terms of last summer’s debt ceiling deal, and a variety of other tax cuts also go away.

Knowing this, are you still sure that a “failure” by the congressional supercommittee to reach a deal would be such a disaster?

In an ideal world, of course, reasonable members of Congress could agree to a balanced package of long-term spending cuts and tax increases to begin bringing the deficit down, coupled with short-term measures to boost the economy.

Gail Collins: Something to Shoot For

You may have noticed that Congress is unpopular.

Really, really unpopular, actually. Only 9 percent of Americans approve of the way Congress has been doing its job, according the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. And you do sort of wonder about that 9 percent. Do you think they misheard and thought they were being asked: “Do you approve of Christmas?”

This week, the House of Representatives took time out of its busy schedule of going home for vacation to remind us, once again, why it has the strong support of about as many people who believe Rick Perry should be the next president of the United States. It approved a bill requiring states with strict gun regulations to honor concealed weapon carry permits issued in states where the gun rules are slightly more lax than the restrictions on who can dispense ice cream cones from a truck.

Richard D. Wolff: Criticism, Violence and Roosting Chickens

The 99 percent offered criticism of the 1 percent. They exposed and made clear what most Americans know. They struggled peacefully to inform and mobilize public opinion. They won huge numbers of hearts and minds. The 1 percent in the US did what their counterparts in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, and so on did earlier this year. First, they tried to deny the 99 percent the media access needed to reach the people. That failed. Then, they tried scattered police intimidation and pressure to stop the criticism. That failed. Then, Democratic Party operatives tried to convert the Occupiers to become Obama enthusiasts for next year’s election. That failed, too.

So now, the weapon of criticism wielded by the 99 percent suffers the counter criticism of violence by servants of the 1 percent. No one will miss which side resorted to organized, massive violence so early and so unnecessarily in this conflict. As in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, having failed to win hearts and minds, US government agencies cover their failure by resorting to violence. Chickens raised abroad return home to roost as they often do. Consider the image: New York Police Department machines and personnel destroy the free library that had functioned so well in Zuccotti Park.

William Rivers Pitt: Deadly Secrets

The world is made of deadly secrets. We are surrounded by them, enveloped in them, yet are seldom able to see them for what they are … and when we do see them, it is a scarring, revolting, horrifying experience of revelation. The child rape scandal still unfolding at Penn State University is a case in point. I have friends and family who attended that school, who love the place with all their hearts, and when the gruesome secret of Jerry Sandusky’s alleged barbaric behavior exploded on to the front pages of every newspaper, a little piece of their hearts died forever.

It scalds when you find out you’ve been deceived, when something you loved and trusted is revealed as being rotten straight to the core, but it is better to know than to be in the dark. Jerry Sandusky’s power over the children he allegedly molested came from the secrecy he operated in. As soon as that secrecy was removed, his power over those children was ended. No matter how sickening the details may be, how heart-wrenching it is to hear and read what is nothing more or less than the stuff of nightmares, it is always better to know.

In the dead of night last night, the movement to hold big banks accountable for their crimes took two major hits. Occupy Wall Street activists were swept from Zuccotti Park as radical members of Congress moved to gut funding for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and advance a series of shocking proposals to roll back financial reform.

Midnight Madness

Mayor Bloomberg decided that a bit of dirt and grime was worth risking a riot. He arrested over 70 in Zuccotti Park, issuing a lengthy and unconvincing statement regarding the dangers of camping. So worried was the NYPD about what might happen, they forced down a CBS helicopter filming from above, according to Gawker.

On Capitol Hill, a similar rout was taking place in the dead of night. In a fast move that deals a serious blow to a key regulator in charge of Wall Street derivatives trading, Obama’s budget request for CFTC was cut by more than a third by GOP legislators eager to kill any oversight of Wall Street.

Anne Applebaum: La Commedia è Finita!

All political careers end in failure, a British politician once said. Even so, politicians rarely fail as spectacularly as did Silvio Berlusconi, who at long last resigned on Saturday night, to the cheers of his countrymen (“la commedia è finita!” writes an Italian friend) and the approval of stock markets around the world.



Not that he is aware of having failed: On the contrary, Berlusconi clung to power-petulantly, angrily-until the bitter end. He finally left office only because “eight traitors,” in his words, failed to support him during a vote last week, and he lost his parliamentary majority. Had that not happened, he surely would have carried on, even as the Italian financial system collapsed in a hail of fire and brimstone all around him.



I leave it to others to puzzle out what will happen to the Italian financial system next, and I don’t envy them. A couple of weeks ago, I heard a senior European central banker solemnly declare that the future of the entire continent might well depend upon whether and when his colleagues would once again begin to purchase Italian government bonds. It is bad enough that Greece is about to go down in flames. But Italy? The fourth-largest economy in Europe? The eighth-largest economy in the world?

Birgitta Jónsdóttir: Lessons from Iceland: The People Can Have the Power

As early progress in Iceland shows since the banking collapse, the 21st century will be the century of the common people, of us

The Dutch minister of internal affairs said at a speech during free press day this year: “Law-making is like a sausage, no one really wants to know what is put in it.” He was referring to how expensive the Freedom of Information Act is, and was suggesting that journalists shouldn’t really be asking for so much governmental information. His words exposed one of the core problems in our democracies: too many people don’t care what goes into the sausage, not even the so-called law-makers, the parliamentarians.

If the 99% want to reclaim our power, our societies, we have to start somewhere. An important first step is to sever the ties between the corporations and the state by making the process of lawmaking more transparent and accessible for everyone who cares to know or contribute. We have to know what is in that law sausage; the monopoly of the corporate lobbyist has to end – especially when it comes to laws regulating banking and the internet.

Joan Walsh: Newt Gingrich: His baggage has baggage

The GOP presidential primary is a lot like a kindergarten t-ball game: When it comes to being in first place, just about everybody gets a turn. And now, congratulations, Newt Gingrich: It’s your turn!

Steve Kornacki wrote about the Public Policy Polling survey that found Gingrich is following in the footsteps of Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Herman Cain as the Republican flavor of the week. Gingrich benefits from three things: A lot of Republicans can’t stand Mitt Romney, Cain and Perry have shamed themselves in public, and by contrast, he’s had no bad debates. So far he’s come off as smart and affable, trying to rally his rivals against the big, bad media that’s trying to get them to fight.

Since Gingrich has mostly been in single digits, far back in the polls, his rivals have humored him and ignored his liabilities. That’s about to change, and Gingrich, like Perry, Cain and Michele Bachmann before him, will likewise wither under the hot sun of political scrutiny. The seemingly affable professor and author is a hothead with many political liabilities and almost as many enemies. He’s committed so many political and ethical transgressions that his baggage has baggage.

Laurie PennyOccupy Wall Street: Police Violence Reveals a Corrupt System

Better-off Occupy Wall Street protesters are learning something about the relationship between citizen and state

At four in the morning in lower Manhattan, as what remains of the Occupy Wall Street encampment is loaded into trash compacters, some protesters have still not given up on the police. Kevin Sheneberger tries to engage one NYPD officer in a serious debate about the role of law enforcement in public protest. Then he sees them loading his friend’s tent into the back of a rubbish truck. Behind him, a teenage girl holds a hastily written sign saying: “NYPD, we trusted you – you were supposed to protect us!”

The sentiment is a familiar one. Across Europe, over a year of demonstrations, occupations and civil disobedience, anti-austerity protesters have largely shifted from declaring solidarity with the police – as fellow workers whose jobs and pensions are also under threat – to outrage and anger at state violence against unarmed protesters. Following last month’s police brutality in Oakland, and today’s summary eviction of the Occupy Wall Street camp, American activists too are reaching the conclusion that “police protect the 1%”.

Unemployment is at 9 percent, the housing market is moribund, “consumer confidence” is an oxymoron and three-fourths of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track. So how is it that President Obama leads each of his likely Republican opponents in the polls? And why on earth is the gap widening rather than closing?

It’s simple: Voters are paying attention to what the GOP field is saying-not just the applause-line attacks on Obama but also what the candidates propose to do about the economy. The more they talk, the more discouraged the electorate seems to become.

This should be the Republicans’ election to lose. They seem well on their way.

George Zornick: Will Clarence Thomas Recuse Himself From Obamacare Case?

Today, the Supreme Court agreed to hear constitutional challenges brought on by twenty-six states and a business group to President Obama’s healthcare reform bill. There will likely be arguments in the spring and a ruling by July, right in the heat of the presidential election.

This is a good time to recall that seventy-four members of Congress have signed a letter asking Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from any ruling on the Affordable Care Act because of his wife’s work as a conservative activist and lobbyist, where she specifically agitated for the repeal of “Obamacare.” The recusal effort was spearheaded by Representative Anthony Weiner, and his resignation in June slowed the momentum around this issue on Capitol Hill-but there’s still ample evidence for concern.

Dave Zirin: The World Joe Paterno Made

Meet John Matko. John Matko is a 34-year-old Penn State class of 2000 alumnus, distraught by the recent revelations that Coach Joe Paterno and those in charge at his alma mater allegedly shielded a serial child rapist, assistant Jerry Sandusky. He was livid that students chose to riot on campus this week in defense of their legendary coach. He was disgusted that the Board of Trustees decided to go ahead as planned with Saturday’s Nebraska game just days after the revelations became public. John Matko felt angry and was compelled to act. He stood outside Saturday’s Penn State-Nebraska game in Happy Valley and held up two signs. One read, “Put abused kids first.” The other said, “Don’t be fooled, they all knew. Tom Bradley, everyone must go.” (Tom Bradley is the interim head coach.)

The response to Matko gives lie to the media portrayal of last Saturday’s game. We were told the atmosphere was “somber”, “sad” and “heart-rending”, as “the focus returned to the children.” The crowd was swathed in blue, because, we were told, that is the color of child abuse awareness (also the Penn State colors). The team linked arms emerging from the tunnel. They dropped to a knee with their Nebraska opponents at midfield before the game. Once again, broadcasters told us, “the players were paying tribute to the victims of child abuse.” We were told all of this, and I wish to God it was true.

Ann Wright: No Speedy Trial for Bradley Manning; Now in Pre-Trial Confinement for 560 Days

3 of 34 Arrested for Protesting Manning’s Quantico Pre-Trial Conditions Found Guilty of Obstruction of Traffic-$15 Fine

Five months ago, on April 22, 2011, over 400 citizens converged on Quantico Marine Base to protest the pre-trial conditions of alleged Wikileaks whistleblower US Army Private First Class Bradley Manning.  Manning was arrested on May 26, 2010, on a U.S. military base in Iraq on suspicion of giving classified material to the website WikiLeaks.

No Speedy Trial-Manning still in pre-trial confinement after 560 days

Manning still is in pre-trial confinement, 560 days after he was arrested.

Manning was charged on July 5, 2010, with transferring classified materials on his personal computer, and communicating national defense information to an unauthorized source. An additional 22 charges were added on March 1, 2011, including wrongfully obtaining classified material for the purpose of posting it on the Internet knowing that the information would be accessed by the enemy; the illegal transmission of defense information; fraud; and aiding the enemy.  In April, 2011, he was found fit to face a court martial and currently awaits the first hearing.

Conservatives need to contemplate what the Rick Perry and Herman Cain stories say about the state of their movement and the health of their creed.

Perry’s debate gaffe last week was about something more important than “brain freeze.” Memory lapses can strike anyone, even if they are more awkward when they occur during a presidential debate.

What really matters is the subject that sent Perry’s brain into lockdown. He was in the middle of describing sweeping changes in the federal bureaucracy closely connected to his spare vision of American government. One presumes a candidate for president ponders such proposals carefully, discusses them with advisers, and understands their implications.

Robert Kuttner: The Superfluous Super Committee

Once again, we have a familiar soap opera. Will the Democrats save the Republicans from crashing and burning as a consequence of the Republicans’ own folly?

In this case the soap opera involves the so called Super Committee of Congress.

In August, in order to avoid taking responsibility for a default on the U.S. government debt, a needless crisis of their own making, the Republicans cut a deal under which a bipartisan committee of Congress had to come up with at least $1.2 trillion dollars of deficit cuts by November 23 (Happy Thanksgiving) or automatic cuts of the same amount would kick in beginning in 2013.

Joe Conason: Mindless-but Always Talking Loud

At a time when nations that tax, spend, regulate and invest more consistently outstrip the United States in many measures of progress, leading Republicans speak only of smashing government and ending vital programs. In this constantly escalating rhetorical game, it became inevitable that one of them would eventually expose the emptiness of this vainglorious display. And it was unsurprising that the ultimate faker would turn to be Rick Perry.

The dim demagogue could scarcely contain himself during the CNBC debate last Wednesday night as he turned to Ron Paul, his fellow Texan whose sincere hatred of government verges on anarchism, saying: “I will tell you, it is three agencies of government when I get there that are gone. Commerce, Education and the-what’s the third one there? Let’s see.”

John Nichols: The New GOP Front-Runner: Dick Cheney

There is not a lot of fresh polling data on Dick Cheney. While it is fair to say that the numbers are probably a bit better than they were when the CBS News/New York Times team found in the final poll of the Bush-Cheney era that the outgoing vice president had a 13 percent favorable rating, there’s no evidence to suggest that Americans have warmed to the country’s chief advocate for war, torture, surveillance and secrecy.

Except, this is, among the Americans who are considered front-runners in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

With the exception of Ron Paul (who is actually right about a lot of issues) and John Huntsman (who is actually rational), the crowd on stage at Satirday night’s “Republican Commander-in-Chief Debate” in South Carolina oozed Cheneyism.

Ari Melber: Four Signs Herman Cain Isn’t Really Running for President

Herman Cain is running a pretty strong presidential campaign, depending on whom you ask. The press covers him intensely: In early November, Cain was the “dominant” newsmaker in a whopping 72 percent of all campaign news stories, (according to a Pew report). Cain’s rivals now see him as a threat, attacking him regularly. And Republican voters are following these cues, at least in theory, telling pollsters that they support him. But what about Herman Cain?

A review of his recent activities, commonly referred to as a presidential campaign, suggest four big reasons why he is not really running for president at all.

The continent is destroying the weak to protect the strong. But will that be enough?

The eurozone crisis is a bank crisis posing as a series of national debt crises and complicated by  reactionary economic ideas, a defective financial architecture and a toxic political environment, especially in Germany, in France, in Italy and in Greece.

Like our own, the European banking crisis is the product of over-lending to weak borrowers, including for housing in Spain, commercial real estate in Ireland and the public sector (partly for infrastructure) in Greece.  The European banks leveraged up to buy toxic American mortgages and when those collapsed they started dumping their weak sovereign bonds to buy strong ones, driving up yields and eventually forcing the whole European periphery into crisis. Greece was merely the first domino in the line.

Robert Reich: Why We May Be In Store for a Passionless Presidential Race

Polls show Americans angrier and more polarized than at any time since the Vietnam War. That’s not surprising. We have the worst economy since the Great Recession and the worst politics in living memory. The rise of the regressive right over the last three decades has finally spurred a progressive reaction. Occupiers and others have had enough.

Yet paradoxically the presidential race that officially begins a few months from now is likely to be as passionless as they come.

President Obama will be supported by progressives and the Democratic base, but without enthusiasm. His notorious caves to Republicans and Wall Street – failing to put conditions on the Street’s bailout (such as demanding the Street help stranded home owners), or to resurrect Glass-Steagall, or include a public option in health care, or assert his constitutional responsibility to raise the debt limit, or protect Medicare and Social Security, or push for cap-and-trade, or close Guantanamo, or, in general, confront the regressive Republican nay-sayers and do-nothings with toughness rather than begin negotiations by giving them much of what they want – are not the stuff that stirs a passionate following.

It’s the weekend. The air is brisk, the leaves are tumbling, so it’s time for – yes! – another Republican debate!

The Republicans meet again Saturday night in South Carolina, where the whole nation will get to see the effects of the long-awaited Newt Gingrich Surge.

Newt is up! CBS basically has Gingrich, Mitt Romney and Herman Cain in a dead heat. A McClatchy-Marist poll has Mitt at 23 percent, followed by Newt at 19 percent and Cain at 17 percent. Only 30 percent of Romney’s supporters said that they firmly back him, noted Lee Miringoff of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion. “Gingrich’s number is 43.”

Eugene Robinson: The Nonsense Debate

Don’t laugh too hard at Rick Perry for his mortifying episode of brain-lock at Wednesday’s GOP presidential candidates’ debate. His opponents managed to remember their lines, but didn’t do any better at making sense.

OK, I understand, the Perry Meltdown is hard to resist. There are three reasons why the Texas governor needs to pack it up and head back to Austin: He’s embarrassing himself; his plunging poll numbers give him little chance of winning the nomination; and, um, let’s see, the third reason, wait a minute, it’ll come to me. …

David Sirota: Why Income Inequality Suddenly Matters

A few weeks ago, as the Occupy Wall Street protests were first spreading, something amazing happened: For 10 whole seconds, the local reporter on my TV screen actually talked about the realities of the recession. He even uttered the phrase “economic inequality.”

My guess is that you’ve seen something similar on your local affiliate-and that’s no minor event. When even the most local of television journalists are compelled to acknowledge this crushing emergency in a country whose media aggressively promotes American Dream agitprop, it means the Occupy protesters have scored a monumental victory. You can almost imagine a Wall Street CEO turning to an aide and muttering a slightly altered riff off LBJ: “If we’ve lost Ron Burgundy, we’ve lost Middle America.”

Paul Rogat Loeb: From Occupy Wall Street to Occupy the Neighborhoods

The Occupy movement has done something amazing, getting Americans to start questioning our economic divides. It’s created spaces for people to come together, voice their discontents and dreams, creatively challenge destructive greed. It’s created powerful political theater, engaged community, an alternative to silence and powerlessness.

But it also faces major challenges. I’m fine that this new public commons isn’t offering detailed platforms for change. We can find plenty in almost any Paul Krugman or Robert Kuttner column. Instead, the movement has highlighted the destructive polarization of wealth while voicing what one young woman called “a cry for something better.” And that’s a major contribution. The movement and its allies now need to keep spreading this message to that majority of Americans who are sympathetic, but have given up on the possibility of change. To reach those more resistant, who might respond if seriously engaged. To make the physical occupations not just ends in themselves, but bases where more and more people can participate and find ways to publicly act. To keep momentum building even in the winter cold and when media coverage fades. To find continuing ways for people to act without dissipating their energy in an array of fragmented efforts. And, although some participants would disagree, to become part of a broader movement that without muting its voice helps bring about a better electoral outcome in 2012 than the disaster of 2010, when corporate interests prevailed again and again because those who would have rejected their lies stayed home.

The Karl Rove-backed super PAC, Crossroads GPS, has made the first major ad buy in the Massachusetts Senate contest between Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren, attacking Warren for her support of Occupy Wall Street.

It’s no surprise that Rove and his ilk are attacking Warren. She’s a major threat to the Republican Party and its allied corporate backers for two reasons.

Number one: she’s running even with Brown in a race that may very decide control of the Senate.

Number two: her reformist background and brand of progressive populism is deeply resonant right now. Unlike so many in Washington, she’s taken on the banks and their allies, is not beholden to them, and is not afraid of them. That makes her dangerous to the political establishment in both parties. No wonder Tim Geithner didn’t want her running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Karl Rove doesn’t want her in the Senate.

E. J. Dionne, Jr.: The Right Wing’s 2011 Shellacking

This week’s elections around the country were brought to you by the word “overreach,” specifically conservative overreach. Given an opportunity in 2010 to build a long-term majority, Republicans instead pursued extreme and partisan measures. On Tuesday, they reaped angry voter rebellions.

The most important was in Ohio, where voters overwhelmingly defeated Gov. John Kasich’s bill to strip public employee unions of essential bargaining rights. A year ago, who would have predicted that standing up for the interests of government workers would galvanize and mobilize voters on this scale? Anti-labor conservatives have brought class politics back to life, a major threat to a GOP that has long depended on the ballots of white working-class voters and offered them nothing in return.

Dave Zirin; Penn State and Berkeley: A Tale of Two Protests

Last night, two proud universities saw student demonstrations that spiraled into violence. On the campus of Penn State University in State College Pennsylvania, several hundred students rioted in anger after the firing of legendary 84-year-old head football coach Joe Paterno. At the University of California at Berkeley, 1,000 students, part of the Occupy USA movement, attempted to maintain their protest encampment in the face of police orders to clear them out.

At Penn State, students overturned a media truck, hit an ESPN reporter in the head with a rock and made every effort at arson, attempting to set aflame the very heart of their campus. They raised their fists in defense of a man fired for allegedly covering up the actions of a revered assistant who doubled as a serial child rapist. The almost entirely male student mob was given the space by police to seethe and destroy without restraint.

At Berkeley, the police had a much different response. Defenseless students were struck repeatedly with batons, as efforts were made to disperse their occupation by Sproul Hall, the site of the famed Mario Savio-led free speech battles of the 1960s.

Two coasts and two riots: a frat riot and a cop riot. Each riot, an indelible mark of shame on their respective institutions.

Timothy Egan: Ascent of a Woman

SEATTLE – Crawling along a ledge leading to the 13,775-foot summit of Grand Teton two months ago, Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, paused for an instant at the crux of the climb. The gap between her and the next solid footing was nearly half a vertical mile of thin Rocky Mountain air.

“The guide said there was no room for mistakes,” said Cantwell. “So I just never looked down.”

Having mastered a technical and demanding route up the central spire of the Teton range, Cantwell is back at sea level taking on a more elusive target – Wall Street. She has been after the lords of big finance for almost a decade, and is furious now that reforms intended to rein in the kind of car-bomb speculation that brought down the global economy have been seriously diluted. Wall Street has not changed its ways.

If only he’d written them on his wrist.

The most recent Republican debate will be remembered forever as the time Rick Perry announced that as president he’d immediately close down three federal agencies and then could remember only two. (“Commerce. Education. What’s the third one?”)

He appeared to be asking Ron Paul, who gave him the wrong answer. There we were, back in third grade, peeping at the next kid’s paper. Except for the part where everybody in class is running for president.

So much for Governor Perry, who went out not with a bang but an “oops.”

Richard (RJ) Eskow: Sorry, GOP: It Looks Like America’s Bullsh*t Detector Just Went Off

It’s great when we can disagree in a civilized way, but it’s getting pretty hard to avoid the conclusion that the phrase “right-wing logic,” as delivered by the GOP and mimicked by Mitt Romney, has become the mother of all oxymorons. They tell us corporations are people. But people? Not so much. That Right used that argument that in yesterday’s elections, but it’s starting to look like voters in swing states and the heart of Red America have had enough.

They love to preach the “corporate personhood” principle. IBM, Goldman Sachs, Halliburton: They’re people! Why, they can even “speak”! Sure, they may be limited to the crude vocabulary of millions and billions, but you gotta admit: Come election time, they’re fluent in it.

These corporations are endowed with freedom of speech, say Mitt and Friends, but employees of the same corporations aren’t – especially when that speech involves forming a union. Follow the logic and the conclusion is inescapable: the Right believes that the company is a person but the people who work for it aren’t.

Got that?

Michelle Chen: Tar Sands Protest Shows Unity, Tension in Green-Labor Alliance

Thousands gathered near the White House on Sunday to say no to the Keystone oil pipeline. The human chain the protesters formed symbolized unity among environmentalists, youth, indigenous groups and other communities, all calling for decisive political action against climate change and fossil fuels.

But the emergent coalition has encountered fissures between environmental and economic goals. Pipeline boosters have controversially claimed that some 20,000 jobs are at stake in the project, which would channel notoriously dirty tar sands oil (PDF) from Alberta to Texas. Activists have challenged and debunked the fuzzy math surrounding the projections of new jobs and “energy security,” and say environmental destruction shouldn’t trump narrow economic arguments, anyway. But tell that to struggling construction workers and others frustrated at Washington’s failure to alleviate the jobs crisis–some of the same folks you might find nearby at an Occupy DC rally.

Jim Hightower: Don’t Just Salute Veterans, Rally With Them

Here’s a surprise that the power elites really hate to see: Many members of the 1 percent are joining the “We are the 99 percent” movement in various Occupy Wall Street protests.

I don’t mean that corporate CEOs and hedge fund billionaires are suddenly in the streets to show solidarity with millions of Americans who’re fed up with the systemic inequality and corruption infesting our economic and political systems. No, no – those swells aren’t about to dirty their Guccis with any street action. Rather, I’m talking about another, extra-special 1 percent of our society – the soldiers who’ve been the “boots on the ground” in Washington’s long misguided and bloody wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This Veterans Day, thousands of vets from America’s abused “war class” are not marching in little feel-good parades. Instead, they’re rallying with the Occupy movement, expressing their anger at being used in two senseless wars that enriched corporate contractors while the troops lucky enough to come home alive can’t find decent jobs and are shorted on the health and education programs they desperately need.

Paul Hogarth: Across the Country, Voters Reject Right-Wing Extremists

While San Francisco elections were largely anti-climactic, across the country voters rejected en masse the right-wing Tea Party politics that have plagued national politics. Nowhere was it more obvious than Ohio – where voters decisively, by a 2-1 margin, crushed Republican Governor John Kasich’s attack on public employees. In Maine, voters rescued same-day voter registration from the right-wing Governor – as marriage equality advocates prepare to go back to the ballot next year. And even in Mississippi, voters rejected an extreme measure that would define a fetus as a person. After polls closed on the East Coast and before they closed in San Francisco, I followed these results on my laptop – giddy with excitement, as if America had finally awaken from a coma and was back. I hadn’t felt this much hope and optimism about politics since 2008.

Once it became clear that Ohio’s Issue 2 – which would take away the right of the state’s public employees to collectively bargain – was going down in flames, Governor Kasich made a televised concession speech. It was defensive and defiant (he said he would “take a deep breath” and “assess where the voters are” at least three times), while trying to save face about how his intentions had “always just been” to “help create jobs” in Ohio.

Robert Parry: An Iraq-WMD Replay on Iran?

The American public is about to be inundated with another flood of “expert analysis” about a dangerous Middle Eastern country presumably hiding a secret nuclear weapons program that may require a military strike, although this time it is Iran, not Iraq.

In the near future, you will be seeing more satellite photos of non-descript buildings that experts will say are housing elements of a nuclear bomb factory. There will be more diagrams of supposed nuclear devices. Some of the same talking heads will reappear to interpret this new “evidence.”

You might even recognize some of those familiar faces from the more innocent days of 2002-2003 when they explained, with unnerving confidence, how Iraq’s Saddam Hussein surely had chemical and biological weapons and likely a nuclear weapons program, too.

More than 10,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C., last Sunday with a simple goal: Encircle the White House. They succeeded, just weeks after 1,253 people were arrested in a series of protests at the same spot. These thousands, as well as those arrested, were unified in their opposition to the planned Keystone XL pipeline, intended to run from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf Coast of Texas. A broad, international coalition against the pipeline has formed since President Barack Obama took office, and now the deadline for its approval or rejection is at hand.

Bill McKibben, founder of the global movement against climate change 350.org, told me: “This has become not only the biggest environmental flash point in many, many years, but maybe the issue in recent times in the Obama administration when he’s been most directly confronted by people in the street. In this case, people willing, hopeful, almost dying for him to be the Barack Obama of 2008.”

Kim Knowlton: The Staggering Health Costs of Climate Change

The extreme weather just won’t seem to leave people alone this year.

I’m talking to an arborist to find replacements for beloved lilac bushes and one magnolia tree that just got tall enough to lend some nice summer shade, now snapped off in its prime by last weekend’s wet October snowfall that’s being called “Snowtober” by some.

My sense of humor about the year has worn thin. Neighbors across much of upstate NY and Vermont are still reeling in very serious ways from the flooding and water damage of Irene: farms and fields that were underwater, homes upended, village main streets still mending from cascades of debris and mud, all at a time when the regional and national economy is limping, at best. The preliminary tally of damages from 2011’s weather disasters already “exceed $45 billion”, according to the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). And we have nearly two months to go.

Adil Shamoo: Bahrain’s Courageous Doctors

The United States continues to ignore the thwarted Arab Spring in Bahrain. Recently, a quasi-military court in the small Gulf state sentenced 20 doctors and nurses to up to 15 years in jail. The charge against them? Treating injured demonstrators opposing the regime.

Doctors and nurses in the Middle East have a long and proud tradition of treating the ill, regardless of the situation. In ninth-century Baghdad, for example, Hunayn ibn Ishaq was the Caliph’s physician. The Caliph asked this physician to prepare a poison to kill his enemies. The physician refused, risking his life, and was eventually jailed for one year. After serving his sentence, the Caliph inquired as to why he refused. The physician replied, “My profession is instituted for the benefit of humanity and limited to their relief and cure.”

Conventional journalism is increasingly irrelevant in a time of crisis. We find abundant proof in a recent column from the New York Times’ so-called “Public Editor,” who is supposed to somehow magically represent the public interest and rarefied ethical values to the rest of the paper.

In this column, he says the media is having difficulty figuring out how to cover Occupy Wall Street and its offshoots.

   What are the themes? How should The New York Times cover this movement that resembles no other in memory?

Certainly, media organizations are intrinsically better able to cover snapshot moments like official actions and pronouncements than movements or complex and subtly if rapidly evolving situations-like climate change, or Occupy.

John Nichols: Block the Vote: Ohio GOP Bars Early Voting to Suppress Pro-Labor Turnout

TOLEDO – When Mitt Romney’s dad was a candidate for president back in the 1960s, Republicans competed on the strength of their personalities and ideas.

It was the same when Newt Gingrich was an up-and-coming Republican leader in the 1980s and the early 1990s.

But no more?

Republicans have a new strategy for competing in tight elections.

They cheat.

In Ohio this fall, the party faces a serious challenge. Republican Governor John Kasich, a GOP “star” for the better part of three decades, has staked his political fortunes on an attempt to eliminate collective bargaining rights for public employees while undermining the ability of their unions to function.

The move has proven to be massively unpopular. More than 1.3 million Ohioans signed petitions that forced a referendum on whether to implement the anti-labor law. Polls show that Ohioans are ready to do just that when they weigh in on referendum Issue 2.

But Ohio’s Republican secretary of state is trying to make it a whole lot harder for Ohioans to cast those votes.

Jim Hightower: Shouldn’t Americans Repair American Infrastructure?

Listening at last to his inner FDR, President Barack Obama is going straight at the Know-Nothing/Do-Nothing Republicans in Congress.

At a rally in September on a bridge connecting Rep. John Boehner’s state of Ohio to Sen. Mitch McConnell’s state of Kentucky, Obama challenged the two GOP leaders to back his plan for repairing and improving our country’s deteriorating infrastructure.

“Help us rebuild this bridge,” he shouted out to Boehner and McConnell. “Help us rebuild America. Help us put this country back to work.”

Yes, let’s do it!

However, in addition to the usual recalcitrance of reactionary Republican leaders, another impediment stands in the way of success: many of the infrastructure jobs that would be created could end up in China.

Holy Uncle Sam! How is this possible?

Eugene Robinson: The Shame in Happy Valley

Legendary Penn State football coach Joe Paterno said, “I did what I was supposed to.” In fact, nobody at Penn State did what basic human decency requires-and as a result, according to prosecutors, an alleged sexual predator who could have been stopped years ago was allowed to continue molesting young boys.

The arrest Saturday of former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky on felony child sex abuse charges, involving at least eight victims, has sent university officials scrambling to justify a pattern of self-serving inattention and inaction.