Truthout 5/24

William Rivers Pitt | Two Stories, One Truth
William Rivers Pitt, Truthout: "My morning routine has been a standardized thing for many years now. I roll out of bed, turn on 'Sportscenter' in the living room, get the coffee going in the kitchen, and then bunker in at my desk for a couple of hours of reading news reports and email at my computer."
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Below the Radar: HUD Is Trying to Privatize and Mortgage Off All of America's Public Housing
George Lakoff, Truthout: "The Obama administration's move to the right is about to give conservatives a victory they could not have anticipated, even under Bush. HUD, under Obama, submitted legislation, called PETRA, to Congress that would result in the privatization of all public housing in America."
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EPA Officials Weigh Sanctions Against BP's US Operations
Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica: "Officials at the Environmental Protection Agency are considering whether to bar BP from receiving government contracts, a move that would ultimately cost the company billions in revenue and could end its drilling in federally controlled oil fields."
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Robert Reich | The Challenge of Closing Tax Loopholes for Billionaires
Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog: "Who could be opposed to closing a tax loophole that allows hedge-fund and private equity managers to treat their earnings as capital gains - and pay a rate of only 15 percent rather than the 35 percent applied to ordinary income?"
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Israel's Ongoing War Against the Press
Michael Corcoran, Truthout: "The recent arrest of an Israeli journalist who allegedly leaked materials to a reporter, and the gag order that followed, is just the latest in a long string of Israel's systematic attacks on press freedom."
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Back to Marx: How Can His Work Help Us to Understand Modern Times?
Laurent Etre, Humanite in English: "The world economic crisis has ended the taboo on referring to Marx. More and more works are being published on the author of Das Kapital, and the press is publishing special sections on him."
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Whistleblowers Speak: Who's Protecting Them and Who's Listening?
Rose Aguilar, Your Call: "Over the past few decades, whistleblowers have changed the course of history. One of the country's most famous corporate whistleblowers was tobacco executive Jeffrey Wigand. Thanks to his leaks in 1995 to CBS's '60 Minutes,' Big Tobacco CEOs were exposed on Capitol Hill, their companies were successfully sued by the states, and the government began regulating tobacco advertising. In 2002, Time Magazine honored whistleblowers Cynthia Cooper of Worldcom, Sherron Watkins of Enron, and Colleen Rowley of the FBI as its 'Person's of the Year.'"
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Spaceship Earth: Navigators Wanted
Alyce Santoro, Truthout: "Forty-one years ago, Buckminster Fuller published his 'Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth: A Bold Blueprint for Survival that Diagnoses the Causes of the Environmental Crisis.' In it, he claimed humanity would not survive the 21st century if it continued to build an economy based on mass consumption, inequitable trade relations, short-sighted allocation of fossil based resources and lack of consideration for holistic systems."
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James Howard Kunstler | Out of Darkness
James Howard Kunstler, Truthout: "If the Devil created an anti-city, a place where people would feel least human, Atlanta would surely be that place - despite the prayerful babble of tongues emanating from the evangelical roller rinks at every freeway off-ramp. One might think: Los Angeles, but that city at least came up with the amenity of valet parking, mostly lacking in Atlanta, where the suffocating heat slows the journey of blood from heart to brain."
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Norman Solomon | When the Leaders Lead, the People Have Sorrow
Norman Solomon, Truthout: "Many are familiar with the adage, 'When the people lead, the leaders will follow.' But what happens when people enable leaders to follow the dictates of the powerful? These days, the answers are arriving in the form of a news drumbeat that's apt to seem like a dirge."
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Citizen Alioune: How Not to Deal With Muslims in America
Stephan Salisbury, TomDispatch: "Alioune Niass, the Sengalese Muslim vendor who first spotted the now infamous smoking SUV in Times Square and alerted police, is no hero. If it were not for the Times of London, we would not even know of his pivotal role in the story. No mainstream American newspaper bothered to mention or profile Niass, who peddles framed photographs of celebs and the Manhattan skyline. None of the big television stations interviewed him."
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"The World Bank May Cause Ecuador's Ruin"
Veronique Sandoval, Humanite in English: "Is a Country Entitled to Effective Legal Sovereignty Over Its Natural Resources? Seven hundred million dollars. That is the sum Ecuador, one of the smallest countries in Latin America was sentenced to pay to the Texaco-Chevron multinational on March 30th."
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We Need to Dump the Word "Illegal"
Kung Li, Truthout: "The owner of Mulligans, a watering hole popular with middle-aged white men in Cobb County, Georgia, regularly updates his marquee to comment on current events. Here is what's up today: HELL YEH, ARIZONA. SEND THEM WETBACKS HOME! ANCHOR BABIES & ALL! IF U CAN'T FEED UM DON'T BREED UM!"
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How to Shrink Corporate Tumors With Immunogentility
W. David Kubiak, Truthout: "War budgets booming, drills and nukes reviving, health insurers hooting, agro-biz bloating, privacy invasions through the roof - any progressives or patriots out there not ulcerating yet?"
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The War Is Making You Poor Act (Video)
Watch Rep. Alan Grayson introduce "The War Is Making You Poor Act."
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