ARE ELDERLY AMERICANS THE “PICTURE OF AFFLUENCE?” Thatfflu is the picture drawn in a new Pew Research study of the “net worth” of American households. The average net worth of seniors of $170,500 seems “affluent” only by contrast with the almost non-existent amount of $ 3,700 for those under 35. With many older people now [...]
ISRAEL: GET YOUR GAS MASK, YITZAK! SYRIA MAY BE ABOUT TO “TRANSFER” ITS CHEMICAL WEAPONS TO THE HEZBOLLAH MILITIA IN LEBANON. Israeli warplanes, for the first time in six years, launch an airstrike keep inside Syria, allegedly targeting a convoy headed toward Lebanon with such weapons. Although analysts doubt that either Syria or its [...]
WHERE ARE SEATTLE KIDS GOING TO FIND A 38-FOOT HIGH DIVING PLATFORM WHEN THE “RAMPS TO NOWHERE” ARE TORN DOWN? Ramps connected to the Route 520 highway have been abandoned for 40 or more years when plans to make various connections to the road were dropped after citizen protests. One of these will [...]
SIDING WITH THE CHARTER SCHOOL SUGAR DADDIES. This is Bruce Dixon’s description of President Obama’s educational policy. The No Child Left Behind program of school privatization and operation on a corporate accountability measures based on standardized tests results has continued with a vengeance with the Race to the Top policy of the current administration. [...]
DOES ISRAEL HAVE A RIGHT TO EXIST? Let’s put that another way, says Patrick Higgins; does “murderous settler-colonialism” have a right to exist? The current Israeli raids on Gaza provoke this question. Higgins compares the Jewish settler movement in the middle east to the process of white settlers “winning the west” from native Americans. [...]
DRINKING BEER WITH BUSH OR PLAYING FLAG FOOTBALL WITH ROMNEY: WHEN ARE NEWS REPORTERS GOING TO DROP THEIR PRETENSES OF BEING OBJECTIVE JOURNALISTS? An Associated Press reporter confuses political news with a fashion review in describing Romney’s attire and other senseless details of Romney and his campaign aides playing a game with reporters and [...]
VOTER DISENFRANCHISEMENT IS NOT JUST ABOUT VOTER ID LAWS. Although they’ve received the lion’s share of media attention and legal activity, efforts by states to impose new voter ID requirements before this Election Day are hardly the only methods being used by lawmakers and government officials to cut down on the number of Americans [...]
HOW AN ECONOMIC BOOM CAN BE A BUST FOR LABOR. THE USA? NOT THIS TIME, BUT SOUTH KOREA. A report of the International Trade Union Confederation makes this point about the economy of South Korea, often upheld as a “model” of what an Asian economy can be. If so, it is not a model [...]
U.S. MILITARY SLOW TO CONVICT SOLDIERS ACCUSED OF RAPE AND OTHER SEXUAL ASSAULT CHARGES—BUT QUICK TO THREATEN DISCIPLINE OF A WHISTLE-BLOWER FROM MILITARY CRIME LAB. McClatchy Newspapers publishes a report on the disposition of such charges and shows that less than 10% of them result in convictions. In another part of the wider [...]
TRAGEDY TIME IN AMERICA: WHEN THE COUNTRY’S ASSASSIN-IN-CHIEF BECOMES THE COUNTRY’S COMFORTER-IN-CHIEF. President Obama does the “moral multi-tasking” which seems to go with his office of leader of his nation which has become the bully of the world. The Aurora CO shootings follow the endlessly repeated pattern in which horrific situations, both “man made” [...]
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