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The strong case that Eric Alterman’s book What Liberal Media? made in 2003 against the propaganda-style claim by rightwingers, that the mass media has a liberal bias, is an expanding understatement. Just read recent issues of The Washington Post and The New York Times to see the most extreme reactionaries getting the kind of coverage…
By Ralph Nader – This time the big banks and mortgage servicing companies, with their long, one-sided fine print contracts, may have outsmarted themselves. The newspaper headlines and the network television news are blazing news of the erupting fraudulent foreclosure process. This long-overdue coverage is generating public visibility and suddenly hundreds of thousands of foreclosures…
Imagine interviewing a woman who has done something that no other woman in the recorded history of the world has accomplished. The remarkable Roz Savage has rowed solo across the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. She intends to row solo across the Indian Ocean early next year starting in Perth, Australia. In 2012 she will…
How does the Big Business-indentured Republican Party get away with expectations of a runaway election victory this November? If such a victory should occur in Congress and for many governorships and state legislatures, it will be due to a ten percent or so shift in voters who voted Democratic in 2008 and are expected to…
Let’s celebrate some good news, before some qualifications are considered. Traffic fatalities in the U.S.A have dropped to a 60 year low. There were 33,808 deaths in 2009—a 9.7 percent decline from the previous year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety administration (NHTSA). The reduction was across the board from passenger vehicles, light trucks,…
It is astonishing how many Democrats in the past three months have been making the worst case scenario for their prospects in the November mid-term Congressional elections. Do they believe that the most craven Republican Party in history needs their help in such a self-fulfilling prophecy? The arguments that the Democratic pundits, along with some…
September 7, 2010 Members of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs United States Senate Washington, DC 20510 Dear Senator, We are writing to urge you and your colleagues on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs to convene a public hearing to review the government’s deployment of whole-body scanners at passenger…
What does Labor Day mean anymore other than another day off, another store sale and, in some cities, parades ever smaller and more devoid of passion for elevating the well-being of working people? Philosopher/mechanic Matthew B. Crawford, in his recent, embracing book, Shop Craft as Soulcraft has a thoughtful consideration. He deflates the high-prestige workplace…
Katsuko Nomura—a builder of consumer, labor, cooperative and women’s rights groups for over 55 years in Japan—passed away this month at the age of 99. She was one of the most remarkable civic leaders anywhere in the world. With her range of activities, she could be called a world citizen. To recognize her indomitable spirit…
Bell, California, a working-class town of some 38,000 ten miles outside of Los Angeles, is a unique place. Its local government has proven to be citizen-proof, media proof, city-council proof and even leak-proof from inside its self-enriching top officialdom. Get this: Bell city manager. Robert Rizzo resigned a month ago after a Los Angeles Times…