4/22/12
4/19/12
Social justice union-busting?
, a restorative justice adviser in San Francisco at Paul Revere Elementary School and a candidate for his union's executive board on the Educators for a Democratic Union slate, looks at the politics of school layoffs in his city.
April 19, 2012
A teacher from San Francisco joins in protests against budget cuts in Sacramento in March THE SAN Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) is asking educators to shoulder the burden of the economic crisis--and wants to trample the union contract in the process.
The School Board voted 5-to-1 on February 29 to send out pink slips to 245 teachers and 249 paraprofessionals. The board also decided to bypass seniority in implementing the layoffs by exempting the 14 schools in the so-called Superintendent's Zone, using social justice language to justify their attack.
According to an SFUSD press release, the district created the "Superintendent's Zone of 14 schools located primarily in the Bayview and Mission neighborhoods of San Francisco to focus more resources on closing the achievement gap in some of the city's historically lowest performing schools...In skipping certificated employees in the Superintendent's Zone in the layoff process, the district is living up to its commitment to access, equity, and social justice."
As a member of United Educators of San Francisco (UESF), I know that there is no social justice in this these layoffs. For starters, the schools have been placed in the zone on an arbitrary basis. Other schools serve the exact same student demographics, but are left out of the zone. As a UESF document pointed out, all public schools in San Francisco have a mix of students, and there is no clear way that these schools have been chosen.
In fact, some of these schools have already been targeted for reforms under state legislation required by the federal Race to the Top program. For example, Carver Elementary was forced last year to use the turnaround model, which meant they had to replace at least 50 percent of their classroom teachers and the principal.
However, Carver is in the Superintendent's Zone, and will be skipped over for seniority for layoffs this year. How is it possible that they replace a majority of teachers one year ago and then claim social justice to jump seniority the next? SFUSD wants to have its cake and eat it, too.
Even worse is that the exemptions are conditional. They are not for all staff at these schools, but only for teachers. Our most vulnerable union members, the paraprofessionals, will be laid off.
Overwhelmingly, paraprofessionals work directly with students who need the most attention. Paraprofessionals are not compensated at living wages and have been left out of most pay raises. Why is it okay to lay off paraprofessionals, mostly people of color, at a school, yet save the mostly white teachers? That doesn't sound like social justice.
Furthermore, the high turnover in these schools is not primarily because of layoffs. The main reason people leave is because their job feels overwhelming. Singlehandedly, teachers and paraprofessionals are supposed to overcome the achievement gap when capitalism creates this gap in the first place.
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TO PERFORM the task of overcoming the achievement gap, educators are given tools that don't work. What you find at the "bottom 5 percent" schools is testing, testing and testing. At my school, Paul Revere, which has students from pre-K to 8th grade, first graders are tested every single week in math and language arts. The first graders can't fill in their own Scantron bubbles, so the teachers take their own valuable time and, along with parent volunteers, bubble in the tests.
Some teachers started to keep track of the amount of time spent testing in the later grades. They recorded in excess of 67 hours for this school year alone. Yet all this testing has done is discourage teachers--and it has not closed the achievement gap at all.
Educators have been great at implementing these inadequate tools, despite knowing that more testing is not going to close the gap. This leads to good teachers getting demoralized, as they are tired of being blamed or labeled as bad teachers.
The final kick in the face is that SFUSD has enough money in the bank to avoid layoffs this year. With $55.8 million in unrestricted reserves and an additional $23.3 million in restricted funds, they could easily keep teachers and paraprofessionals on the job. And if they really cared about social justice, they would be hiring people.
There is nothing about social justice in what the district is doing, so why is this happening now?
It is not coincidental that UESF and SFUSD have just started bargaining a new contract. In addition to the layoffs, SFUSD is asking for $36 million in concessions at the bargaining table. In a way, their playbook is the one used in Los Angeles two years ago, in which seniority was attacked on the basis that schools disproportionately affected by layoffs should be exempted from such cuts.
In San Francisco, the district is trying to put different groups against one another: teachers in the Superintendant's Zone vs. teachers out of the zone; teachers vs. paraprofessionals; and finally, teachers vs. the community. In making this attack on seniority, and using social justice as its reason, the district is trying to break our unity.
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FORTUNATELY, UESF has already begun to fight back, with a rally of 300 people at the school board March 14. Many passionate and talented teachers spoke about the way the district was attacking the community.
Among those protesting was Van Cedric Williams, who has been a teacher for 10 years. He said:
Do I teach my students to be good students by pitting their friends against each other, by pitting their employees against each other? We know that you have $55 million in reserve funds. You need to make the tough decision to spend it on the teachers. I tell my people invest in yourself and do well, but the school district won't and that's a shame.A teacher at El Dorado Elementary told the school board:
I read with interest when the Superintendent told the [San Francisco] Chronicle that the layoffs won't tilt the earth on its orbit. That may be true factually--you could lay off all the teachers in the district, and the earth would not be tilted. But I invite you to come to El Dorado and tell our community that laying off seven to 15 classroom teachers does not, in fact, make a big tilt.To justify its policy of concentrating teacher layoffs in some schools and exempting others, SFUSD officials point to the district's achievement gap between white and Black students. Of the seven largest urban districts in California, SFUSD is number one for test scores for white students. For Latinos, it is slightly worse, at third. But for African American students, it is last.
So there is definitely a need to close the achievement gap in San Francisco. It will take a movement that demands more resources for schools. UESF is a part of the solution by fighting to obtain additional funding for these schools. Seniority and the union help protect activists who are fighting for justice in the schools and in the community.
The movement for education justice will also have to take on wider issues like housing rights and stopping foreclosures (one block in the historically African American Bayview neighborhood has 14 foreclosed homes on it). If we are serious about the achievement gap, we need a new civil rights movement in San Francisco that fights for raising the standard of living for the most hard-pressed communities of color in this city. This is what we in Educators for a Democratic Union are committed to.
via: The Socialist Worker
Lives stolen by the police
April 19, 2012
Rekia Boyd and Stephon Watts are two of the latest victims of police murder in the Chicago area. Rekia was a 22-year-old living on Chicago's West Side. She was shot by an off-duty officer who opened fire at a group of people standing on the edge of a city park, injuring one man and striking Rekia in the head. Stephon was an autistic 15-year-old killed in his own home by Calumet City officers supposedly responding to a call for assistance. The police claim Stephon threatened them with a butter knife.
In both cases, the police officers have not been punished in any way. In fact, on April 18, the Cook County state's attorney announced officially that no charges would be filed against officers in the murder of Stephon Watts.
Relatives of Rekia and Stephon were among the speakers at an April 11 forum in Chicago titled "Trayvon Martin and the Fight Against the New Jim Crow." Other speakers included Keeanga Yamahtta-Taylor of the International Socialist Organization, Bishop Tavis Grant and Rev. Jeanette Wilson from Operation PUSH, Allisah Love of the Free Howard Morgan campaign, and Simeon Wright, the cousin of Emmett Till, who was killed by racists in 1955.
Here, we print the speeches of Rekia's brother Martinez Sutton, and Steven Watts and Wayne Watts, Stephon's father and uncle. You can watch the full meeting at WeAreMany.org.
In both cases, the police officers have not been punished in any way. In fact, on April 18, the Cook County state's attorney announced officially that no charges would be filed against officers in the murder of Stephon Watts.
Relatives of Rekia and Stephon were among the speakers at an April 11 forum in Chicago titled "Trayvon Martin and the Fight Against the New Jim Crow." Other speakers included Keeanga Yamahtta-Taylor of the International Socialist Organization, Bishop Tavis Grant and Rev. Jeanette Wilson from Operation PUSH, Allisah Love of the Free Howard Morgan campaign, and Simeon Wright, the cousin of Emmett Till, who was killed by racists in 1955.
Here, we print the speeches of Rekia's brother Martinez Sutton, and Steven Watts and Wayne Watts, Stephon's father and uncle. You can watch the full meeting at WeAreMany.org.
Stephon Watts and Rekia Boyd Martinez Sutton
HI. HOW are you all doing? For those of you who don't know, I'm the brother of Rekia Boyd. For people who didn't hear the story, she was out enjoying herself in Douglas Park. It was an unusually hot winter day, about 74 degrees, and so she was enjoying some of the weather.She had to go and use the washroom, so a friend of hers let her use the washroom, and as she came out, a little crowd was confronted by an off-duty officer, Detective Dante Servin. He had words with one of the young men from the inside of his car. Nobody knew that he was an officer, nobody knew who he was. He was not an African American, and he was around the neighborhood at one o'clock in the morning--I mean, the first thing somebody's going to think is, you know, he's coming to buy drugs.
Words went back and forth for a second, and before everybody knew it, a gun was displayed outside the driver's side window. And anywhere from 10 to 18 shots rang out. Now this officer claimed that he was scared, that he feared for his life. But 10 to 18 shots don't sound like fear to me. Sounds like you're out hunting. You're shooting to kill.
There were two people shot that night. Mr. Cross was shot in the hand, and the way that he was shot and the way the bullet entered, it was more of a defensive wound--he was trying to shield his face. And another bullet hit my sister in the head.
She laid there for close to 30 minutes before she received any help. The ambulance couldn't get through. They had to roll the gurney almost a block just to come and get her. The hospital was a mere four blocks away.
When she got to the hospital, nobody touched her for six hours. Six hours! She laid there with a bullet in her head, clinging on to life. One surgeon finally had the courage to touch her, because she was young. Her vitals were still strong, and the doctor said that, you know, she hadn't given up on life. So she took the chance until her brain swelled, and of course she had to stop.
Now, my sister got shot around 1 o'clock in the morning. My sister was staying with me. I wasn't notified until 10:30 in the morning. I'm looking at the news, praying for a family of a 22-year-old girl who got shot in the head. I'm sending my prayers out to this family, and saying, you know, nobody can even enjoy themselves no more.
I come to find out when they knocked on my door, I'm the family that I'm praying for--my little sister.
She wasn't found with drugs on her. She wasn't found with any weapon--nobody in the crowd had a weapon. Nobody displayed a gun. According to Dante Servin, somebody showed one, but police were on the scene in less than 30 seconds. Where did the gun go?
When the detectives knocked on my door, they asked for me by name: "Are you Martinez Sutton?" I said, "Yes, what's the problem?" They said, "Are you the brother of Rekia Boyd?" I said, "Yes, what's going on?" They said, "Well, she's been involved in a crime." "A crime?" I said, and my eyebrows went up. I said, "What did she do? Where is she?" They said, "Well she's been shot in the head, she's laying in the hospital in critical condition--that's all the information we have. This is where you can find her at, and this is the number you can call to find out what's going on. Sorry." And they walked away.
That was the last contact I had with the police. Nobody called and offered the family condolences. We didn't even get a Hallmark card, a card at the funeral or anything.
You know, I miss my sister. I miss her coming upstairs, sitting in my chair for about 30 minutes, talking to me about improving her life. Talking to me about her ambitions and goals. And the craziest thing is, the day I planned her funeral was the day she was supposed to move down to Bloomington and start her life anew.
Now she can't do that. Why? She's six feet in the ground. Not able to move, not able to talk for herself, defend herself or anything--while this monster is still on the streets, working for this police department that's talking about how "we're investigating." What needs to be investigated? Nobody did anything wrong that night. Nobody.
And one of the most crazy things of all is that where my sister laid, near an alley, is right behind the officer's house. I guess nobody told you all that--right behind his own house. He came down the one-way street the wrong way, in his personal vehicle. He could have been intoxicated. We're not 100 percent sure yet, because nobody told us anything.
We're just looking for answers, and these tears on my face, they're not tears of defeat. They're not. I'm not going to stop. They're tears of determination. They're tears of anger.
They're just trying to sweep this under the rug. I want you all to know the rug has just been lifted off the floor. We're going to keep pushing for this until I get justice for my sister. Thanks you all.
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Stephen Watts
Hello everyone, thank you for inviting me here. On February 1, my life changed. My baby was taken from me. He was murdered by Calumet City police officers.It hurts so bad to talk about it that I'm going to introduce my brother and let him explain it to you. Because I'm in a lot of pain. I've seen four therapists, three psychiatrists. I can't sleep at night, I have to take pills. My baby is gone, he's six feet under, and he's not coming back. And there's nothing I can do about it. So, Wayne Watts, if you'd like to come up here.
Wayne Watts
We'd like to thank everybody out there for inviting us this evening. We as the Watts family stand in agreement with all the families here--Trayvon Martin, Rekia Boyd, Howard Morgan. But we also will need your help. We want justice, and we want justice now.There's two police officers who came to my brother's house, and shot and murdered my nephew, and they could be walking around and talking to anybody--we don't even know their names. I've called, and I've called, and I've called, and no one will give us any information. Nothing. It's just a blank-out on what's going on.
This pain is horrendous. This pain is unimaginable. I'm sitting here listening to the stories, and I can feel all this pain going down to my toes because it's horrendous.
They shot and murdered my nephew in front of his father. We all, as parents, have this fear that one day, somebody's going to come knocking on your door. Right? We have this fear as a parent--I'm worried about my child, where is my child, where are they? Oh god, I can't find them, have you seen them? Because we're worried that something's going to happen.
But can you imagine seeing your baby's life taken in front of you. His last breath, and you see it.
My brother has been suffering immensely. He blames himself, constantly, over and over again. I said, "Stephen, you did not let these people come to your house to murder your child." He told me when they came in there that day, he told them it was alright, that he had things in order. They said, "No, we have to see Stephon."
He didn't call 911. He called non-emergency, because this was what we were afraid of--because he's a young Black child, just made 15 years old and had autism.
And you're talking about the police. We went up to the police station, and my sister-in-law was screaming and hollering, "You killed my baby! You killed my baby!" The officer told her, "Have a nice day." She screamed out, "What do you mean, have a nice day? You killed my child." And he's standing there, and he just smirked. And smiled.
Then they had a police press conference, and the police chief said, "We've been to the house nine or ten times, but Stephon crossed the line this time. He crossed the line." An autistic child--what line did he understand in his head? What line did he cross? I don't understand lines. What do you mean? And these officers are supposed to be trained for this.
So this pain is immense. I keep going over it in my head. What could I have done to save this baby? Could I have said another word? Should I have done this, should I have done this. And my brother is going through monumental pain. We're trying to go to church, we're trying to see psychiatrists, and every day, I have to hear him say, "It's my fault. It's my fault." I said, "Stephen, it's not your fault." He says, "It's my fault. I killed my baby. I killed my baby."
And so we need your help, because we want justice for Stephon Watts. I want justice. So I'm asking you guys to please sign this petition for us so we can get justice. They will not give us any information--they won't give us anything.
I'm asking for help. As a matter of fact, for my baby, I'm begging for it. We need help--to hold him up. So I can keep him standing up, so he can keep on fighting for his baby.
They were best friends. He keeps telling me, "Bro, I don't know what I'm going to do. My best friend's gone." He's gone. He's in the ground with that box over his head.
This stuff has got to stop, and it's got to stop now.
So I made this promise to my little brother. My health is not in the greatest shape. But I told him, until my dying breath, we will fight for your child. We will fight, I will turn over every rock, every stone and whatever I got to do, but I want justice.
I'm not talking about money. You cannot replace that baby. No amount of money can replace that child--not to see his face, not to see his children, not to see his marriage. All of that is all gone.
We had dreams for Stephon. We talked about what he was going to do when he grew up because he loved computers. So he thought that he's going to be a computer repairman, he's going to buy his own house. None of that will happen anymore--none of that.
So he's suffering now, and I'm standing up here to try to be his rock. And I will continue being a rock, brother. Because like I said, I don't know when the time is going to come when he stops blaming himself.
[Trayvon Martin's father and mother] said today that you have good times, and you have bad times, and that's what he has. For a minute, he's smiling, and the next minute, I'll look at him and ask, "What's wrong?" And he says, "He's gone."
So we are asking for your help. Please sign these petitions for us, because we are trying to get justice. We got to stop this, and we got to stop this now. This is 2012. This can't ever happen again--stop it now. Justice for these families! Justice for these families! We want justice, and we want justice now!
via The Real News
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News from AFL-CIO
April 19, 2012
Thought you knew enough about CEO pay? Check out our brand-new AFL-CIO Executive PayWatch—CEO Pay and the 99%. Last year S&P 500 Index CEOs saw an average 14 percent pay boost—to $12.9 million. Compare that to the average 2.8 percent raise for workers lucky enough to have a job. On the searchable site, find out about the shady world of private equity where Mitt Romney is the new poster boy, cash-hoarding corporations, the role mutual funds play in CEO pay and more. Read more and comment.![]()
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Workers Challenge Whirlpool’s ‘Golden Coffins’
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Wal-Mart: One More Reason Why We Need Equal Pay
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ALEC Disbands Key Task Force as More Corporations Sever Ties
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Public Investment Best Engine for Economic Growth
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Speakers Oppose ‘Blunt Instrument of Program Consolidation’ at Job Training Hearing
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Scott Walker’s No Abe Lincoln
Read more important news of the day on the issues working families care about.
April 19, 2012
Thought you knew enough about CEO pay? Check out our brand-new AFL-CIO Executive PayWatch—CEO Pay and the 99%. Last year S&P 500 Index CEOs saw an average 14 percent pay boost—to $12.9 million. Compare that to the average 2.8 percent raise for workers lucky enough to have a job. On the searchable site, find out about the shady world of private equity where Mitt Romney is the new poster boy, cash-hoarding corporations, the role mutual funds play in CEO pay and more. Read more and comment.
Read more important news of the day on the issues working families care about.
News of the movement for April 19, 2012 |
News Corp. is a "toxic institution" that operated like a "shadow state" in British society, according to a Labour MP who is the co-author of a new book about the phone-hacking scandal.
Dan Sabbagh and Lisa O'Carroll, The Guardian
The wide-ranging police inquiry into phone hacking and other wrongdoing at Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid newspapers moved a step closer to possible criminal prosecutions when Scotland Yard sent files on 11 unidentified people, including four journalists and a police officer, to the Crown Prosecution Service.
John F. Burns, New York Times
Committee to Protect Journalists's Mará a Salazar-Ferro names the 12 countries where journalists are murdered regularly and governments fail to solve the crimes. Where are leaders failing to uphold the law? Where are conditions getting better? And where is free expression in danger?
Committee to Protect Journalists
The grisly photographs of American soldiers posing with the body parts of Afghan insurgents during a 2010 deployment in Afghanistan were the source of a dispute between the Los Angeles Times and the Pentagon lasting weeks.
Brian Stelter, New York Times
Washington looks set to wave through new cybersecurity legislation next week that opponents fear will wipe out decades of privacy protections at a stroke. The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) will be discussed in the House of Representatives next week and already has the support of 100 House members. Opponents fear the way it is currently drafted will open up ordinary citizens to unprecedented scrutiny.
Dominic Rushe, The Guardian
The Internet's been ablaze this week with news about CISPA, a new cybersecurity bill that's set to be introduced on the House floor next week. Vocal critics have likened it to SOPA, the doomed anti-piracy bill that caused widespread outrage and protests earlier this year. Even though the two bills are markedly different, they both touch on very sensitive topics for people. Just how public is the private information we share? And who has the right to share it? It's a concern that’s uniquely important to communities of color.
Jamilah King, Colorlines
In the wake of SOPA, everyone hailed the new power of the tech lobby to rile up the online masses and stop Congress in its tracks. But now, the netroots are turning on tech companies.
Elizabeth Wasserman and Jennifer Martinez, Politico
While 'Stop Cyber Spying Week' is focused on U.S. initiatives, Canadians should be concerned as well as the adoption of a privacy-invasive U.S. cybersecurity strategy is likely to have serious implications for Canadian civil liberties. For this reason, Canadian civil society groups have joined the protest.
Katiza Rodriguez, EFF
Verizon Wireless has long talked up its extensive 700 MHz holdings as the crème-de-la-crème of 4G spectrum, referring to them on numerous occasions as "beachfront property," compared to the more modest spectral real-estate many of its competitors own. But Verizon revealed it planned to sell off many of its beachfront 700 MHz licenses in exchange for permission to buy the very same low-rent spectrum it's derided in the past.
Kevin Fitchard, GigaOM
Critics of Verizon's planned purchase of cable operator spectrum were quick to jump on the company's announcement that it was putting the 700 MHz spectrum it got in an FCC auction on the block contingent on the approval of the purchase of AWS spectrum from SpectrumCo.
John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable
The Obama administration urged the Supreme Court to review the FCC's decision to fine CBS for Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" during the 2004 Super Bowl.
Brooks Boliek, Politico
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is the most powerful corporate front group you've never heard of. Drawing the vast majority of its financing from big corporations, the group allows these firms to help write bills that it then secretly passes off to state legislators to get turned into laws. The next time you groan at the thought of paying your broadband bill, remember that some of America's biggest corporations are funding a group that works to make sure your city is barred from offering a cheaper and faster service.
Zaid Jilani, AlterNet
Despite the fear-mongering by North America's wireless phone companies that a spectrum crisis is at hand -- one that threatens the viability of wireless communications across the continent, some of the most prominent industry veterans dispute the public policy agenda of phone companies like AT&T, Verizon, Bell and Rogers.
Phillip Dampier, Stop the Cap!
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco struck down a ban on political ads on noncommercial TV and radio stations. Not surprisingly, the prospect that Elmo and the Dowager Countess now might have to share the airwaves with attack ads prompted a mild freakout.
Gavin Aronsen, Mother Jones
Public radio and television stations are weighing the opportunities and risks of accepting political advertising following a federal court ruling that found an existing ban on such ads violates the First Amendment, and that running them would not undermine public broadcasting's mission.
D.C. Denison, Boston Globe
The station says it is making 'progress' in reinventing itself after bolting PBS in 2011, but revenue is way down and few new shows have been produced. Critics question its survival.
James Rainey, Los Angeles Times
4/16/12
via :The voice of Grey Hat (hat Tip)
"The World Tomorrow" - Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange TV Show
"The World Tomorrow" - Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange TV Show
Do you want to catch Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, if the answer is yes then a golden opportunity is coming for you. In a CNN report it has been come to light that Julian Assange plans to debut a talk show, "The World Tomorrow," on Russia's state-funded television network next week. Assange and RT, an English-language international satellite news channel, would not release the guest lineup in advance, but hinted that the first interview would be controversial. WikiLeaks has asked followers on Twitter if they can guess the show's first guest. "Any bets on who The World Tomorrow's first mystery guest(s) are?" it tweeted.
"You've been waiting and we've been teasing," said RT's website of the show, which will also be released online. The talk show set for launch Tuesday is creating a stir in global media circles. Commentators outside Russia have questioned the apparent link the show creates between Assange and the Kremlin, given RT's government-funded status.
It is unclear how or from where Assange, who is under house arrest in the United Kingdom while fighting extradition to Sweden, will present the show. Assange, in the online trailer, says that the experience of interviewing guests -- described by RT as opinion formers, some of them dissidents -- while under house arrest brings a different dimension to the process. "RT is rallying a global audience of open-minded people who question what they see in mainstream media and we are proud to premiere Julian Assange's new project," Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan said in a statement on the television network's website.
"We provided Julian a platform to reach the world and gave him total editorial freedom. He is absolutely the right person to bring alternative opinions to our viewers around the globe." "The World Tomorrow" will be broadcast [simultaneously] on three RT channels, in English, Arabic and Spanish.
The WikiLeaks website for "The World Tomorrow" said Friday there would be 12 shows in total, each featuring a 26-minute edited interview. "RT is the first broadcast licensee of the show, but has not been involved in the production process. All editorial decisions have been made by Julian Assange," the website said.
"You've been waiting and we've been teasing," said RT's website of the show, which will also be released online. The talk show set for launch Tuesday is creating a stir in global media circles. Commentators outside Russia have questioned the apparent link the show creates between Assange and the Kremlin, given RT's government-funded status.
It is unclear how or from where Assange, who is under house arrest in the United Kingdom while fighting extradition to Sweden, will present the show. Assange, in the online trailer, says that the experience of interviewing guests -- described by RT as opinion formers, some of them dissidents -- while under house arrest brings a different dimension to the process. "RT is rallying a global audience of open-minded people who question what they see in mainstream media and we are proud to premiere Julian Assange's new project," Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan said in a statement on the television network's website.
"We provided Julian a platform to reach the world and gave him total editorial freedom. He is absolutely the right person to bring alternative opinions to our viewers around the globe." "The World Tomorrow" will be broadcast [simultaneously] on three RT channels, in English, Arabic and Spanish.
The WikiLeaks website for "The World Tomorrow" said Friday there would be 12 shows in total, each featuring a 26-minute edited interview. "RT is the first broadcast licensee of the show, but has not been involved in the production process. All editorial decisions have been made by Julian Assange," the website said.
Last two big bang from Wikileaks was Spy Files where he said that Govt is using Malware For Surveillance. Spy Files—includes confidential brochures and slide presentations that companies use to market intrusive surveillance tools to governments and law enforcement agencies. The documents published by Wikileaks include 287 files that describe products from 160 companies. Few months ago Wikileaks released 5 Million emails from Stratfor Global Intelligence, which was named GI Files (Global Intelligence Files)
Via :The Republic
Here’s a chart of Intuit’s lobbying expenditures in Congress, courtesy of Open Secrets. I suspect that some of that nine million dollars of lobbying by that company since 2008 has gone to making it more annoying for you and me to file our taxes.Here’s what I mean.
In some countries, the equivalent of their IRS sends citizens a form listing what they owe. In California, the state has a program called ReadyReturn that lets you do this for California state taxes. You sign it and send it back, and it takes a few minutes. But for most of us, this isn’t how it works. We gather our tax forms and various banking information, and spend the weekend facing a difficult bureaucratic set of forms, hoping we did it all correctly. Or we use a costly tax filing service or software.
Candidate Barack Obama promised to end this nightmare. He said he would “dramatically simplify tax filings so that millions of Americans will be able to do their taxes in less than five minutes.” The IRS would use information it “already gets from banks and employers to give taxpayers the option of pre-filled tax forms to verify, sign and return.” Experts, he said, estimated this would save 200 million total hours or work and $2 billion.
You can file this under yet another broken campaign promise. And why? Who doesn’t like an idea that is so simple and convenient and just generally helpful? Well, the large software makers, for one. Intuit in fact lobbied incredibly hard to kill the California program Ready Return (complete with attacks from right-wing tax groups). Intuit wasn’t completely successful, but under their pressure, California budgeted only $10,000 to get the word out to residents about the program.
And the risk to Intuit is real – here’s what Intuit said in its investor report, describing risks to its business model.
“Our consumer tax business also faces significant competition from the public sector, where we face the risk of federal and state taxing authorities developing software or other systems to facilitate tax return preparation and electronic filing at no charge to taxpayers. These or similar programs may be introduced or expanded in the future, which may cause us to lose customers and revenue. For example, during tax season 2010, the federal government introduced a prepaid debit card program to facilitate the refund process. Our consumer and professional tax businesses provide this service as well.In other words, Intuit will lose a lot of money if the government makes it easier to file your taxes. So how did Intuit manage to prevent the implementation of Obama’s campaign promise? Here’s what Intuit had to say about its strategy.
Although the Free File Alliance has kept the federal government from being a direct competitor to Intuit’s tax offerings, it has fostered additional online competition and may cause us to lose significant revenue opportunities. The current agreement with the Free File Alliance is scheduled to expire in October 2014. We anticipate that governmental encroachment at both the federal and state levels may present a continued competitive threat to our business for the foreseeable future.”What is the Free File Alliance? It’s a coalition of 14 software makers that have signed an agreement with the IRS to provide tax preparation software to the public. You see, the IRS was mandated to provide free online tax prep services to the public, so it outsourced this to existing commercial tax preparers. This agreement was first signed with the Bush administration IRS in 2002, renewed in 2005, and then renewed again under the Obama administration in November, 2009. Even today, despite the Obama campaign promise and demonstrated success around the world, the Free File Alliance indicates on its web page that “Treasury has indicated it does not want the IRS to enter into the tax software business.” And Intuit said on its investor report that this alliance “has kept the federal government from being a direct competitor to Intuit’s tax offerings.”
I’ve been emailing back and forth with White House liaison Jesse Lee over the past few days about this. I’ve asked why the administration has not implemented its campaign promise on pre-filed returns, and I included the information about the Free File Alliance. The agreement with the Free File Alliance does not in fact preclude the IRS from implementing a pre-filing program, so it’s possible this is in the works. Jesse Lee replied, “checking on this’” I’ve sent two follow-up emails, and I’ll let you know what else he says.
(This is part of a series we’re running at Republic Report on how corruption affects ordinary life. The first blog post in this series was “Corruption Responsible for 80% of Your Cell Phone Bill“).
Posted: 15 Apr 2012 09:20 PM PDT
By Philip Pilkington, a writer and journalist based in Dublin, Ireland. You can follow him on Twitter at @pilkingtonphil
In truth the commoditised crap churned out by the great corporate machine is wholly reliant on creativity that emerges from the ground up. Today’s mainstream music scene relies on the hip hop and rap movements that emerged between the 1970s and the early 1990s in black communities in California and New York – needless to say that it is completely out of date but such is the stale nature of these institutions. Contemporary ‘alternative’ music feeds on the punk and post-punk scenes that emerged in Britain and the US in the late-70s and 80s – again, hopelessly out of date.
The great corporate machine simply sanitises and repackages culture in order to feed the masses through their tele-visual tubing. Fine. But it cannot truly create new flavours to inject into the tubes – and anyone who has an instinct to chase the new and the interesting will be quickly turned off. Put simply: corporate capitalism produces many things well – from clothing to furniture (although the question of style once again arises when we examine these in any serious way) – but it cannot produce true art. An alternative mechanism is needed.
Many have come to see this. People have discovered that the internet can provide them far more effectively with their cultural sustenance, so they take out the corporate tubing and logon. But this creates problems.
Stirrings of an Alternative
The economist Dean Baker outlined an alternative some time ago. He calls it the ‘artistic freedom voucher’. An excellent and detailed primer can be found here. Basically, taxpayers fork over money to their favourite artists and in return get tax credits. So, they pay their favourite artists some of the money that should have gone to the government in tax payments. The music would then be published under a ‘creative commons license’ that would allow everyone to access it for free.
Okay great. But this means that the government receives less money because the tax credits are ‘cashed in’ by people donating to the arts. This means that the government receives less revenue. Some have suggested that we offset this with taxes levied on digital audio equipment, blank CDs and internet connections. I have absolutely no problem with this. However, there is, once again, an alternative: we could run the system as a stimulus program and supplement it with an ambitious attempt to publicly subsidise institutions that artists could work in free from corporate influence at little personal cost.
Stimulating Creativity
Across the world today governments have been forced to run massive deficits in order to keep economies ticking over as private sector spending falls. Many of us would prefer that governments increase this spending in order to counter the unemployment that currently plagues most advanced capitalist countries.
Modern Monetary Theorists (MMTers) point out that governments that issue their own currencies can run such stimulus indefinitely until inflationary pressures build which will only happen after recovery takes place. They cite Japan as an example who, having stimulated their economy for over 20 years after the bursting of a private sector debt bubble in 1991, still have not encountered any problems with amassing government debts to the tune of 220% of GDP.
Countries that do not issue their own currencies have problems with large debt burdens – as is shown in certain Eurozone countries at the moment. However, either some formal mechanism is going to have to be put in place to allow these countries to run deficits or the Eurozone itself will collapse in the next few years.
(It is not difficult to fix the Eurozone problem. Although this is not the place to discuss such solutions – of which there are many – suffice it to say that the Eurocrats are well aware of what they can do but are being blocked by political pressures, mainly coming from the current German and French governments and their allies).
What we should do is build the ‘artistic freedom voucher’ into the deficits as a stimulus program. This has been done before in a slightly cruder way. During the Great Depression the Roosevelt administration used the works program they had put in place (the WPA) to channel money to artists. Many artists took part and it was a great success. (For music buffs it should be noted that Woody Guthrie received funding, who would later go on to exert a huge influence over Bob Dylan).
The ‘artistic freedom voucher’ is more consumer friendly, however, in that people are allowed to choose which artists they give their tax credits to. In this it allows greater consumer choice. However, it could be supplemented by a WPA-style compensation fund for new and emerging artists. After all, many a would-be artist might be intimidated by the prospect of having to attract funding to set themselves up, so perhaps we could have a pool out of which to subsidise them for the first, say, 12 months of their career until they can build a fan base for their material.
Through such a stimulus program we could also open public recording studios, public art studios, public filmmaking studios and other facilities that anyone could use for a very small fee. We could do all this in a highly decentralised manner, allowing artists, engineers, directors and producers full control of setting these facilities up while government representatives merely keep an eye on their funding to ensure they’re spending reasonable amounts.
The Politics
This piece was originally written, of course, for the pirates. For those unfamiliar, the pirates are a successful and promising political party that have taken root in Germany and other countries. They have a membership of 24,000 and are growing. They are particularly concerned with many of the issues outlined above.
The pirate political model is perfect for instituting the above reforms. It is through political piracy that the above reforms can be implemented. By supporting these reforms the pirates will no longer be subject to criticism that they are hurting artists and producers. Instead they will be supporting a system where artists can throw off the corporate shackles and embrace their inner potential.
Starting with the arts we can then move on to other areas such as drug patents. Why not have governments subsidise drug research? Rather than having corporations prey on their customers in search of profits – while in the process producing sometimes dangerous drugs with dubious medical value – we can leave it up to the scientists and keep the patents under creative commons, to be used by humanity when needed.
The piracy movement has already taken shape in places like Germany and Sweden, but this should be pushed further. By adopting a real platform based on MMT principles they can start to expand to other countries by encouraging disillusioned young people who support the public good over corporate greed to form pirate parties of their own.
Corporate Shills in Libertarian Clothing
There are, of course, arguments against such proposals. Corporate shills like J. Mark Stanley say that it restricts freedom of choice which, according to him, only the Great God of The Market can provide. Most people with any sense aren’t fooled by Stanley’s theological rhetoric. They know that The Market doesn’t exist in the way Stanley imagines that it should – that is, as a great equaliser that guarantees freedom of choice.
(I’m not going to link to Stanley’s article due to its horrific, robot-prose and juvenile argument. Interested readers can find it for themselves.)
In reality we live in a world where corporations control much of the decisions of production. These corporations operate in oligopolistic or monopolistic fashion. Personally, I don’t think it can be otherwise. Mass production on the scale that modern societies require necessitates huge manufacturing plants and institutions to assist in distribution. It’s really a simple issue of economies of scale – the more of a product is produced, the bigger need be the producing institutions.
Now, that’s fine for producing cell phones and sunglasses, but we simply cannot trust these institutions with other public goods – especially art. Anyone that is not content with the current output of MTV must see the point being made here clearly and shun utopia and childish libertarian rhetoric.
Personally, I know an awful lot of professional artists (I’m an amateur musician myself) and I know well how difficult they find it to survive. Many musicians I know are pressed into destroying their own output and creativity so as to play crappy popularised songs in bars just to make ends meet. Together with the corporate audio-visual tube-feeding system that many of us have in our homes, this is the reality of the ‘market’ insofar as it functions at all. The winner is the participant with the most advertising, PR and corporate monopoly-backing. Like it or lump it, that’s reality. Anyone who believes otherwise is merely a fantasist who has an emotional need for a quasi-religious doctrine – these people generally have no political influence because practical people laugh at them and shun them.
Let’s get to work on eking out a free space for our artists to operate in – a creative space, that is at the same time a commons.
The political forces are aligning, now all we need is the correct approach toward policy. The first thing we must do is to remove the fiscal shackles that bind the minds of most politicians and recognise that, in today’s world, government deficits are a good thing – and it is only a case of channelling funding in the right direction.
I seen a lot of rappers turn soft, I turn my TV off (uh)
And thugs got commercials (yea) thugs in commercials (uh)
And everybody’s chick turned gladiator and shit
No pimps, no hustlers, yo where’s your whips
No Maybachs, no Lambos on the field
Towncar, ridin Music Express
You the best example, yo the industry is whack yo
Now you can bet your label and your Phantom on that
– Kool Keith ‘Bamboozled’
Daily, megacorporations shovel crap into our eyes and ears. There is no worse indictment for the so-called ‘free market’ – which is really just a few giant bureaucratic institutions – than the suppression of creativity in favour of the commoditised effluent of the corporate culture industry.And thugs got commercials (yea) thugs in commercials (uh)
And everybody’s chick turned gladiator and shit
No pimps, no hustlers, yo where’s your whips
No Maybachs, no Lambos on the field
Towncar, ridin Music Express
You the best example, yo the industry is whack yo
Now you can bet your label and your Phantom on that
– Kool Keith ‘Bamboozled’
In truth the commoditised crap churned out by the great corporate machine is wholly reliant on creativity that emerges from the ground up. Today’s mainstream music scene relies on the hip hop and rap movements that emerged between the 1970s and the early 1990s in black communities in California and New York – needless to say that it is completely out of date but such is the stale nature of these institutions. Contemporary ‘alternative’ music feeds on the punk and post-punk scenes that emerged in Britain and the US in the late-70s and 80s – again, hopelessly out of date.
The great corporate machine simply sanitises and repackages culture in order to feed the masses through their tele-visual tubing. Fine. But it cannot truly create new flavours to inject into the tubes – and anyone who has an instinct to chase the new and the interesting will be quickly turned off. Put simply: corporate capitalism produces many things well – from clothing to furniture (although the question of style once again arises when we examine these in any serious way) – but it cannot produce true art. An alternative mechanism is needed.
Many have come to see this. People have discovered that the internet can provide them far more effectively with their cultural sustenance, so they take out the corporate tubing and logon. But this creates problems.
Stirrings of an Alternative
The economist Dean Baker outlined an alternative some time ago. He calls it the ‘artistic freedom voucher’. An excellent and detailed primer can be found here. Basically, taxpayers fork over money to their favourite artists and in return get tax credits. So, they pay their favourite artists some of the money that should have gone to the government in tax payments. The music would then be published under a ‘creative commons license’ that would allow everyone to access it for free.
Okay great. But this means that the government receives less money because the tax credits are ‘cashed in’ by people donating to the arts. This means that the government receives less revenue. Some have suggested that we offset this with taxes levied on digital audio equipment, blank CDs and internet connections. I have absolutely no problem with this. However, there is, once again, an alternative: we could run the system as a stimulus program and supplement it with an ambitious attempt to publicly subsidise institutions that artists could work in free from corporate influence at little personal cost.
Stimulating Creativity
Across the world today governments have been forced to run massive deficits in order to keep economies ticking over as private sector spending falls. Many of us would prefer that governments increase this spending in order to counter the unemployment that currently plagues most advanced capitalist countries.
Modern Monetary Theorists (MMTers) point out that governments that issue their own currencies can run such stimulus indefinitely until inflationary pressures build which will only happen after recovery takes place. They cite Japan as an example who, having stimulated their economy for over 20 years after the bursting of a private sector debt bubble in 1991, still have not encountered any problems with amassing government debts to the tune of 220% of GDP.
Countries that do not issue their own currencies have problems with large debt burdens – as is shown in certain Eurozone countries at the moment. However, either some formal mechanism is going to have to be put in place to allow these countries to run deficits or the Eurozone itself will collapse in the next few years.
(It is not difficult to fix the Eurozone problem. Although this is not the place to discuss such solutions – of which there are many – suffice it to say that the Eurocrats are well aware of what they can do but are being blocked by political pressures, mainly coming from the current German and French governments and their allies).
What we should do is build the ‘artistic freedom voucher’ into the deficits as a stimulus program. This has been done before in a slightly cruder way. During the Great Depression the Roosevelt administration used the works program they had put in place (the WPA) to channel money to artists. Many artists took part and it was a great success. (For music buffs it should be noted that Woody Guthrie received funding, who would later go on to exert a huge influence over Bob Dylan).
The ‘artistic freedom voucher’ is more consumer friendly, however, in that people are allowed to choose which artists they give their tax credits to. In this it allows greater consumer choice. However, it could be supplemented by a WPA-style compensation fund for new and emerging artists. After all, many a would-be artist might be intimidated by the prospect of having to attract funding to set themselves up, so perhaps we could have a pool out of which to subsidise them for the first, say, 12 months of their career until they can build a fan base for their material.
Through such a stimulus program we could also open public recording studios, public art studios, public filmmaking studios and other facilities that anyone could use for a very small fee. We could do all this in a highly decentralised manner, allowing artists, engineers, directors and producers full control of setting these facilities up while government representatives merely keep an eye on their funding to ensure they’re spending reasonable amounts.
The Politics
This piece was originally written, of course, for the pirates. For those unfamiliar, the pirates are a successful and promising political party that have taken root in Germany and other countries. They have a membership of 24,000 and are growing. They are particularly concerned with many of the issues outlined above.
The pirate political model is perfect for instituting the above reforms. It is through political piracy that the above reforms can be implemented. By supporting these reforms the pirates will no longer be subject to criticism that they are hurting artists and producers. Instead they will be supporting a system where artists can throw off the corporate shackles and embrace their inner potential.
Starting with the arts we can then move on to other areas such as drug patents. Why not have governments subsidise drug research? Rather than having corporations prey on their customers in search of profits – while in the process producing sometimes dangerous drugs with dubious medical value – we can leave it up to the scientists and keep the patents under creative commons, to be used by humanity when needed.
The piracy movement has already taken shape in places like Germany and Sweden, but this should be pushed further. By adopting a real platform based on MMT principles they can start to expand to other countries by encouraging disillusioned young people who support the public good over corporate greed to form pirate parties of their own.
Corporate Shills in Libertarian Clothing
There are, of course, arguments against such proposals. Corporate shills like J. Mark Stanley say that it restricts freedom of choice which, according to him, only the Great God of The Market can provide. Most people with any sense aren’t fooled by Stanley’s theological rhetoric. They know that The Market doesn’t exist in the way Stanley imagines that it should – that is, as a great equaliser that guarantees freedom of choice.
(I’m not going to link to Stanley’s article due to its horrific, robot-prose and juvenile argument. Interested readers can find it for themselves.)
In reality we live in a world where corporations control much of the decisions of production. These corporations operate in oligopolistic or monopolistic fashion. Personally, I don’t think it can be otherwise. Mass production on the scale that modern societies require necessitates huge manufacturing plants and institutions to assist in distribution. It’s really a simple issue of economies of scale – the more of a product is produced, the bigger need be the producing institutions.
Now, that’s fine for producing cell phones and sunglasses, but we simply cannot trust these institutions with other public goods – especially art. Anyone that is not content with the current output of MTV must see the point being made here clearly and shun utopia and childish libertarian rhetoric.
Personally, I know an awful lot of professional artists (I’m an amateur musician myself) and I know well how difficult they find it to survive. Many musicians I know are pressed into destroying their own output and creativity so as to play crappy popularised songs in bars just to make ends meet. Together with the corporate audio-visual tube-feeding system that many of us have in our homes, this is the reality of the ‘market’ insofar as it functions at all. The winner is the participant with the most advertising, PR and corporate monopoly-backing. Like it or lump it, that’s reality. Anyone who believes otherwise is merely a fantasist who has an emotional need for a quasi-religious doctrine – these people generally have no political influence because practical people laugh at them and shun them.
Let’s get to work on eking out a free space for our artists to operate in – a creative space, that is at the same time a commons.
The political forces are aligning, now all we need is the correct approach toward policy. The first thing we must do is to remove the fiscal shackles that bind the minds of most politicians and recognise that, in today’s world, government deficits are a good thing – and it is only a case of channelling funding in the right direction.
Dispatches From The War On Women: Poor Women Get No Choice
Mitt Romney would like to be clear about something: being a stay-at-home mom is a choice that demands respect when a rich woman chooses it. Other mothers need to know the “dignity of work” that comes from working a job outside the home and raising children by themselves.
Not surprisingly, Romney offered a pretty lame clarification for believing only poor single mothers shouldn’t have the option of staying home with their children.
Poor women have, without a doubt, suffered the greatest attacks from the right, so it is good news that the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure reinstated funding Planned Parenthood. Over 130,000 women received cancer screens as a result of that funding stream, and the Catholic Bishops and Republicans want to take that away.
The Bishops also plan on disobeying the health care mandate, no matter what the Supreme Court rules.
In Iowa Republican lawmakers want to drug test any woman seeking child support while lawmakers in Rhode Island push for mandatory ultrasounds.
Former Michigan Congressman Pete Hoekstra wants to create jobs by repealing the “nuisance” of pay equity laws. According to Hoekstra, when a business does not have the liberty to freely discriminate it hurts the bottom line. Or something.
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) makes the pro-choice argument on Meet The Press, while arguing against President Obama as a “health care dictator.”
Here is one Oklahoman putting her state’s assault on women’s rights in some context.
One of the reasons why reproductive rights are economic rights is so women don’t have to think of a diamond ring as “insurance.”
It would be helpful if the mainstream media stopped reporting baseless surveys like this one claiming that, if given a choice between bigger boobs and practically anything, women would choose bigger boobs. It’s not a real survey and it’s not news.
Here’s a powerful read from the New York Times on what it was like when women could access abortion care without being called a slut. Abortion care. Not contraception. Look no further for proof that women’s rights are in a free fall.
Thanks for checking back and don’t forget to send in your stories, suggestions and comments. We’ll be back tomorrow with the latest in the best and the worst from the War on Women. So long as the battle rages, we’ll cover the latest, so please check back!
Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/dispatches-from-the-war-on-women-poor-women-get-no-choice.html#ixzz1sEyadhhW
Increasingly, the U.S. government has shown an intense desire to "friend" you, to "follow" you, to get to know your every online move. Now they're channeling that desire towards legislation that clear the path for authorities to work with companies like Facebook, Google and AT&T to snoop on Internet-using Americans. The legislation, called the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act or CISPA, is winding its way through Congress. Timothy Karr, SavetheInternet.com A coalition of privacy groups launched an online campaign on Monday against a House cybersecurity bill, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). The campaign aims to re-create the backlash that derailed anti-piracy legislation earlier this year. Brendan Sasso, The Hill Opposition to pending cyber-security legislation ramped up when several high-profile Internet groups joined forces to protest the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011 (CISPA). Chloe Albanesius, PC Magazine Public interest groups and civil liberties organizations launched a week of Internet-wide protests against the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011 (CISPA), the controversial cybersecurity legislation that would negate existing privacy laws and allow companies to share user data with the government without a court order. The coalition is urging the public to take part in a Twitter protest directed at their lawmakers. Free Press The OpenNet Initiative has analyzed government interference with the Internet in 74 countries. The level of tampering in four categories is graded out of four in each country. See how each country is ranked. Garry Blight, Andrew Rininsland, Simon Rogers and Paul Torpey, The Guardian The principles of openness and universal access that underpinned the creation of the Internet three decades ago are under greater threat than ever, according to Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Ian Katz, The Guardian It's good that Google's chiefs support Web freedom -- but given the company's size, we need to keep an eye on it. James Ball, The Guardian For more than a year, the intelligence services of various authoritarian regimes have shown an intense desire to know more about what goes on in an office building on L Street in Washington D.C., six blocks away from the White House. The office is the headquarters of a U.S. government-funded technology project aimed at undermining Internet censorship in countries such as Iran and Syria. Oliver Burkeman, The Guardian The FCC is scheduled to vote April 27 on whether to require TV stations to post online public information about political ad buys. Some form of the rule seems likely to pass, but the industry and others are lobbying the FCC to alter the nature of the final rule. Justin Elliot, ProPublica Outside political spending is already having an unprecedented effect on the 2012 presidential election, and much of those millions of dollars are going to television advertising. Right now, the only way for voters to find out who is behind the commercials they see is by visiting the station in person and rifling through paper records. An upcoming vote at the FCC could change that -- by requiring broadcast TV stations to put their public files online. Transparency advocates say the move is long overdue, but media industry groups are fighting the proposal. Alice Ollstein, Free Speech Radio News When Google first revealed in 2010 that cars it was using to map streets were also sweeping up sensitive personal information from wireless home networks, it called the data collection a mistake. Federal regulators have charged that Google had "deliberately impeded and delayed" an investigation into the data collection and ordered a $25,000 fine on the search giant. David Streitfield, New York Times Google earned about $38 billion in revenue last year, but the only penalty it's faced in the United States in connection with its Wi-Spy scandal is a mere $25,000 fine. Some say the penalty, issued for obstructing the investigation and not for violating the law, is a slap on the wrist -- too small of a price to pay for collecting troves of personal information from citizens' home networks. Tony Romm, Politico For the Orlando Sentinel, the Trayvon Martin story is local; the shooting of Martin happened in Sanford, a suburb of Orlando. But the newspaper senses an opportunity to reach a national and even international audience with online coverage. It is competing with all manner of national media, which have seized on the story with a ferocity that has already drawn comparisons to the Casey Anthony trial and, years before it, that of O.J. Simpson. Brian Stelter, New York Times Kristyna Wentz-Graff, her Milwaukee Journal Sentinel press credentials dangling from her neck, snapped a series of shots of about 50 Occupy protesters marching near campus at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Wentz-Graff paid scant attention to the sudden line of police rushing past her. She was a veteran of other raucous protests in Wisconsin and thought she knew how to shoot photos without becoming part of the story. Allan Wolper, Editor & Publisher Hard to imagine, but there have only been five anchors of the CBS Evening News (six if you count the pairing of Dan Rather and Connie Chung). And it was 50 years ago, that the original went on the air. Walter Cronkite with the News debuted on April 16, 1962 as a 15-minute newscast. Chris Ariens, TVNewser It was the news story that forever changed the way news was shared. One hundred years ago, when a "tweet" was simply the sound a bird made, the story of the Titanic's sinking spread across the globe via a network of amateurs who used a then-cutting-edge radio technology. Tammy Swift, Grand Forks Herald | The federal government and big companies want limitless new powers to spy on you. And they plan to get them via legislation called CISPA -- the "Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act." Tell your member of Congress to vote no on CISPA and stop this bill in its tracks. A U.S. appeals court just struck down a ban on political ads on public broadcasting. That means your local PBS or NPR station could start running nasty attack ads right away. Tell PBS and NPR to keep their stations free of nasty attack ads. Happy Spring! Help the Media Reform Daily grow by donating $5 or more to the Free Press Action Fund. Your gift will help place the needs of the public -- and our democracy -- before corporate interests. Plus it's bound to put a "spring" in your step! In Other News..CNet Ars Technica MediaPost CNN Communications Technology Ars Technica Upcoming Events25th Annual Arts Advocacy Day April 16-April 17: Washington, D.C. Discussion of News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media Apr 17: El Paso, TX JournalismStrategies.ca April 19-April 21: Montreal Innovate / Activate Conference April 20-April 21: Berkeley, CA Rethink Music Apr 21-Apr 24: Boston, MA Students for Free Culture Summit Apr 22: Berkeley, CA |
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