Tuesday, February 10th, 2015
Dana Milbank, Columnist - The Washington Post
Stephan: Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is not an uneducated man; he was a Rhodes Scholar. It's just that he is a toxically ambitious ideologue who will do or say whatever he thinks will advance his chances to be a national figure and, hopefully, President. Like his Republican colleagues, Governors Scott Walker and Sam Brownback, for instance, he has driven his state to the brink of disaster over his fact-free attitudes.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal talks about his plan for national education reform at a policy breakfast in Washington on Monday.
Credit: J. Scott Applewhite/AP
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal took his presidential campaign-in-waiting to Washington on Monday trailed by an unwelcome, unsavory and downright unpleasant companion: his record.
The interloper followed the Louisiana Republican into the St. Regis Hotel and crashed his breakfast meeting with three dozen reporters, at which Jindal planned to make the case to do for America what he did for Louisiana.
Dave Cook of the Christian Science Monitor, the breakfast host, quickly acknowledged the presence of Jindal’s uninvited guest by pointing out that, for all of Jindal’s claims that he’s a champion of education, a study found that public universities in Louisiana had suffered the deepest cuts per student in the nation under Jindal.
The governor replied by talking about teacher salaries, taxes, state credit upgrades, […]
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Tuesday, February 10th, 2015
Simon Maloy, Political Writer - Salon
Stephan: Here is further evidence of the demise of American democracy and the rise of the oligarchy. This is what it looks like when a few people can buy the political outcome and policies that they want.
David Koch Credit: Carlo Allegri/Reuters
I’m going to subject myself to a little bit of Pundit Accountability™ and go back to a piece I wrote back in November – the day before the election – arguing that the prospects for Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion were pretty good, even if Republicans governors were to have a good election night. “The governors of Tennessee, Wyoming, and Utah – Republicans all – are working on plans that would allow their states to accept Medicaid expansion funds,” I wrote, exhibiting a degree of optimism that is largely out of character for me. That optimism, at least as it pertained to those states, derived from my failure to take into account one critical factor: the intractability and general dickishness of Republican-controlled state legislatures and the Koch empire.
In Utah, Republicans in the state legislature are resisting governor Gary Herbert’s plan to accept Medicaid expansion funds, which would cover 146,000 people at a cost to the state of $236 million over five years. Instead, state Republicans are backing a plan that costs slightly […]
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Tuesday, February 10th, 2015
Alexander Osang, - Der Spiegel (Germany)
Stephan: The other day for no particular reason I began to think: whatever happened to the sailors on the Ronald Reagan, who helped out at the Fukishima disaster, where they were exposed to excessive radiation? I went looking for a fact-based answer, and here it is. The media has long since moved on, and no one other than the sailors and marines and their families seems to care, but I think this is a very substantial story. I think it is notable that I had to go to a German publication to get the latest information. Once again the lives of ordinary people are being sacrificed to the benefit of corporations and bureaucracies.
AFP/US Navy
In March of 2011, the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan rushed to Japan to help after the disastrous tsunami. Since then, many sailors from that ship have fallen ill, possibly as a result of exposure to radiation from the Fukushima nuclear meltdown. They will soon have their day in court.
Credit: AFP/US Navy
In March of 2011, the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan rushed to Japan to help after the disastrous tsunami. Since then, many sailors from that ship have fallen ill, possibly as a result of exposure to radiation from the Fukushima nuclear meltdown. They will soon have their day in court.
On March 11, 2011, the American aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan received orders to […]
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Monday, February 9th, 2015
Stephan: This is very positive news. The evolution of non-carbon energy into not one but several alternatives that are both non-polluting and cheaper coupled with the divestiture movement is proceeding change faster than anyone foresaw. Both trends represent the success that is possible by taking the most compassionate and life-affirming option of those available. This is also a story illustrating how a small group of individuals without official position, power, or personal wealth can create life-affirming social change.
Norway holds particular interest in all this for me because it is an entire country pursuing a wellness-oriented social order. It has made Norweigan culture one of the most impressive in the world, and it is reasonable to ask: why aren't other nations following suit?
“Norway made all its money on oil, but now it’s dumping its fossil fuel stocks. It’s the Rockefeller of countries,” says Bill McKibben.
Credit: Fossil Free
Back in 2012, Bill McKibben with fellow activists including Naomi Klein, Winona LaDuke, Josh Fox and Reverend Lennox Yearwood began a nationwide tour to promote fossil fuel divestment—that is, selling off your shares in fossil fuel companies–in an effort to combat climate change.
With action in Congress impossible, McKibben saw college campuses—known for being laboratories of democracy—as ground zero in the campaign for divestment. With his ‘Do the Math’ campaign in sold-out concert halls across America, McKibben and others were able to launch Fossil Free, an international network of divestment campaigns. It’s a project of the larger organization 350.org. Flash forward three years and the movement has made impressive strides.
Fossil Free lists divestment […]
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Monday, February 9th, 2015
Jackson Marciana, - Mint Press News
Stephan: I have been doing SR in one form or another since 1996, and one of the major things I have particularly noticed over those years is how political corruption has become so blatant. Now the final step is being taken. Just make the whole business of corruption legal. Then it isn't corruption, it is business as usual. Should we read anything into the fact that this is being proposed by a Republican in a Red value state? You decide.
Oklahoma state Rep. Kevin Calvey, R-Del City, chairs the House Revenue and Taxation Committee meeting in Oklahoma City, Wednesday, March 8, 2006.
Credit: AP Photo
Taking payoffs, breaking the law and pushing through unconstitutional legislation as special favors to corporate interests has long been par for the course in politics. But now Representative Kevin Calvey (R – Oklahoma City) wants to make it official and make it illegal to arrest any state officials accused of a public offense.
Representative Calvey has introduced House Bill 2206, which would prohibit Oklahoma’s district attorneys from prosecuting state officials, granting that power exclusively to the state’s Attorney General. This would exempt lawmakers from prosecution of nearly any crimes that are normally handled at the local level.
The bill proposes the following:
“The jurisdiction of a prosecution against a principal in the commission of a public offense, when such principal is a state elected official, […]
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