November 22, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The spreading Occupy movement has seen one after another sit-in, protest camp or march brutally and inexcusably assaulted by paramilitary police actions, using chemical agents and other weapons of war, against unarmed, nonviolent citizens exercising their basic constitutional rights. The result has been a rash of unfettered violence across the world against pro-democracy advocates.
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October 2, 2011 :: The Editors :: No Comment Yet
The above video shows the altercations leading up to the unprovoked macing of two women by an NYPD detective inspector, identified by online activists as Anthony Bologna, a finding confirmed by the NYPD itself. The incident has raised serious questions about what the planned response to the protests was, and whether there were orders in place for officers to intervene to halt the peaceful demonstrations. In the video, there are numerous incidents where individual officers, apparently acting in a disorganized and spontaneous fashion, physically strike, tackle, drag or pepper-spray unarmed civilians on a public street.
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August 1, 2011 :: The Editors :: No Comment Yet
The Republican House leadership today again reiterated the false claim that Democratic leaders and the president have been pushing for “job-killing tax increases”. It is obviously a deliberate rhetorical exaggeration, designed to make a case for tax cuts, in a mode of campaigning and fundraising. But it is also a lie: not one politician in either party has ever called for “job-killing tax increases”.
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July 23, 2011 :: The Editors :: 16 Comments
Ron Paul gave Fox News’ Neil Cavuto the latest in a series of Republican presidential campaign advertisements, posing as interview, today as the nation waited to see Congressional leaders gather with Pres. Obama in the White House Cabinet Room. While Cavuto labored to spin the issue toward a Tea Party interpretation of reality, Mr. Paul made the astonishing claim that the least damaging outcome of the debt ceiling negotiations would be a national default.
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July 16, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
We will not fall magically into a rising tide of job creation, just by depriving ourselves of services and privileges we have built into our way of life and on which our prosperity depends. And we will not create jobs by privileging those industries that are doing the least to innovate. Innovation is the American way; it is what the nation has always struggled to accomplish, and it must be the cornerstone of a new job-creation boom.
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July 5, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
IndependentsOfPrinciple.com :: The Tea Party movement, which claims it is driven by a resistance to taxation, is really motivated by a widespread sense of economic disenfranchisement, that is now reaching everyone except the superrich. The populist urgency that underscores all of the Tea Party’s energy is not inherently linked to Grover Norquist’s anti-American “Club for [...]
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June 28, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The view taken by some in Washington that major reductions in the United States’ national debt can be achieved without addressing revenues is essentially a pledge to do nothing serious about the debt or deficit. The reason: the ideology of supply-side tax-cut-only social policy not only requires, but admires “deficit spending”.
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June 16, 2011 :: The Editors :: No Comment Yet
Spain’s May 15th movement is often called the revolution of the indignados, indignant at the failure of elective government to solve the problems that increasingly define the lives of ordinary people. The complaint, succinctly, is that the powers that be are collaborating in a systemic failure to live up to the rigors of a healthy, legitimate social contract.
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May 5, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
There is a simple response to the GOP hardliners who say bin Laden’s demise justifies waterboarding and other torture techniques used under the Bush administration, and that is: if it had worked, it would not have taken 10 years to locate bin Laden. What “led” the US intelligence community, and SEAL Team Six to bin Laden’s fortified compound was long-running, diligent intelligence work of the kind that is hampered and obstructed by irrational fits of violence, torture and vengeful behavior.
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May 3, 2011 :: The Editors :: No Comment Yet
Now is the time for Republicans to lay down their arms and help Pres. Obama build a better, safer, more cooperative American future. In just a few short days, they have lost the birther issue, the budget issue, and, more importantly, the national security issue. They have no candidates with any military or command experience, and Barack Obama has just accomplished what George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, with all they did to alter US and world politics to empower their administration, could not do in seven: he killed Osama bin Laden.
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April 3, 2011 :: The Editors :: No Comment Yet
Grover Norquist infamously said he wanted to shrink the size of government till it could be drowned in a bathtub. That is, remember, the American government, the revolutionary democratic republic set up by George Washinton, Thomas Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, and company. Not an enemy government, but the government that protects and serves the interests of [...]
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March 12, 2011 :: The Editors :: 3 Comments
Republican governors have unabashedly joined in their party’s national campaign to undermine the economic recovery and marginalize their people in a concerted effort to harm Pres. Obama and derail his re-election bid. In Florida, the new Tea Partyist governor has refused to accept any federal funding for a high-speed rail project that would have stimulated economic growth and job creation in his state, despite Florida being granted $2.4 billion out of the $2.6 billion needed, and the previous governor having explicitly requested the funds.
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March 10, 2011 :: The Editors :: No Comment Yet
Last night, the Republican party is Wisconsin decided to shirk the law, ignore a direct warning from the Assembly minority leader that their actions were a flagrant violation of the law, ignore established process and pass a fiscal proposal as if it were not a fiscal provision. The Senate majority leader, responsible for staging and carrying out this maneuver, said openly that the ban on collective bargaining was intended to make it more difficult for Pres. Obama to win re-election.
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March 10, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
In Wisconsin last night, the Republican state Senate stripped public employees of nearly all collective bargaining rights in a hastily called vote, in a dubious parliamentary maneuver. They did not notify the public or the minority party of their actions with adequate time for debate, and in just 13 minutes, they erased 50 years of progress on labor rights in Wisconsin.
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March 3, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The United States of America is a nation of immigrants. It is a nation that has wrestled with vicious undercurrents of racism and xenophobia, and has emerged ever more democratic, generally trending toward a more perfect union representing the foundational ideals that were, in the 18th century, so far out of reach, but so necessary as core aspirations. And over time, it is a nation that has become richer, stronger and more democratic, by getting closer to those foundational ideals.
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February 20, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
What is democracy? That is the first question that is always asked by pro-regime elements, whether in 18th-century Britain or France or 21st-century Egypt or Bahrain, because their aim is to muddy the waters and oppose the spread of democratic freedom. Free and open access to factual information is the cornerstone right of all citizens of a free society. Journalists are the “Fourth Estate” —in the words attributed to Edmund Burke, by Thomas Carlyle—, the watchdogs of the people’s access to truth.
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February 20, 2011 :: The Editors :: Comments Off
The Republican party has revealed the near total lack of economic foundation for its proposed fiscal policy. ‘Reaganomics’ was based not on tax cuts, but on “deficit spending”. The logic was that deficit spending is a “multiplier” that will so produce new sources of wealth in the investor class that they will be induced to spend billions creating new jobs, that entrepreneurship will result from the “investment” inherent in deficit spending, and government revenues would increase.
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February 18, 2011 :: The Editors :: 4 Comments
Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) is struggling to get control of the House of Representatives, now filled with a freshman class of rogue Republican lawmakers who are refusing to follow his leadership and splitting the party’s majority on one after another vote. Yesterday, conservatives in the Republican House caucus joined progressive Democrats in handing Boehner a loss and Pres. Obama a victory, in voting to cut funding for an unnecessary duplicate engine for the F-35 fighter jet.
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February 15, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Public broadcasting in the United States is not like state-run television in other countries, where the ruling party often influences the editorial stance and the quality of reporting. In the United States, there is an absolute wall of separation between politicians for elective office and the editorial process that shapes what is produced by public broadcasting.
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February 13, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
What took place in Egypt between Jan. 25 and Feb. 11, 2011, was a revolution, but it was non-violent and it joined together disparate ideological factions, rich and poor, old and young, Christian and Muslim. It gave the lie to the notion that moderation in politics cannot be a revolutionary force for transformative change.
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February 13, 2011 :: Eva Scherson :: Comments Off
Rick Santorum, onetime Republican senator from Pennsylvania, threw in his lot with Hosni Mubarak, criticizing Pres. Obama for siding “too soon” with the pro-democracy movement that was calling for the ouster of a brutal authoritarian dictator who ruled for three decades through a relentless campaign of abduction, torture and disappearances.
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February 12, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
There is a fallacy at the heart of the political discourse of late 20th and early 21st century America: that conservatives and liberals are diametrically opposed, unable to work together, and committed at their very core to one another’s destruction. Certainly, when ideology comes into the debate, there are hotly contested arguments to be had. But honest conservatives and honest liberals have a lot more in common than we normally admit.
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February 8, 2011 :: Eva Scherson :: Comments Off
The new Republican plan to amend the Affordable Care Act to institute a form of “backdoor ban” on abortion procedures would give legal protection to doctors who let women die without needed treatment, and impose a severe tax on any business that seeks to provide full health coverage to its employees. The original language of the plan specified that only in cases of “forcible rape” would a woman be entitled to treatment where abortion might be the only way to save her life.
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February 1, 2011 :: The Editors :: 5 Comments
Judge Roger Vinson, a federal judge in Florida, has ruled the entire Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 “unconstitutional”, accepting without trial the argument put forward by 26 states’ attorneys general that the “individual mandate” requiring that Americans purchase insurance or face penalties was not only unconstitutional but was “unseverable” from the rest of the law. Judge Vinson’s ruling is fraught with fictions and distortions and appears to be designed to help insurers avoid facing any new regulation.
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January 15, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Democratic Congressman Heath Shuler and Republican Jason Chaffetz have responded to the rampage in Tucson by calling on staffers to obtain concealed-carry firearms permits and weapons training. Chaffetz has said he will carry a weapon himself when in his home district, implying he will be armed when visiting with constituents. While the emotion behind the [...]
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January 11, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: 5 Comments
George Will today has written a vicious criticism of any attempt to examine whether political rhetoric over the last election cycle was too violent, too full of vitriol and hostility. He flippantly leads with the remark that “It would be merciful if, when tragedies such as Tucson’s occur, there were a moratorium on sociology.” Will argues that conservatives who used inflammatory distortions and thinly veiled threats of violence should not be scrutinized for demonizing others, then leads with a demonization of the entire field of sociology as made up of “half-baked explanations”.
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January 11, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The United States Congress should honor the value of human life and the service of Rep. Giffords and her aides, those who showed uncommon valor and those who lost their lives, by taking up legislation to reinstate the national Assault Weapons Ban, and to make it permanent. There is no sane or defensible reason for allowing people to purchase weapons designed to kill large numbers of people in seconds or minutes. There is no way to justify such a reckless policy as somehow being written into the Constitution.
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January 9, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
In the wake of the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and 19 other people, six of whom have already, tragically, died from their injuries, the national political establishment (media, pressure groups and elected officials) has turned its attention to the perils of extremist and vitriolic rhetoric. We are being asked to consider whether the use of metaphorical violence (putting Rep. Giffords in the crosshairs, which both Sarah Palin and her 2010 opponent did) leads to actual violence, and while direct responsibility is not being alleged, the ethical obligation to honor our democracy with civil discourse must be considered.
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January 6, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Justice Antonin Scalia, long considered one of the most right-wing justices to sit on the United States Supreme Court during the last century, has outraged Constitutional scholars and civil rights advocates by saying the Constitution provides no protection against discrimination for women or for gay Americans. He specifically targeted the “equal protection” clause of the 14th Amendment, arguing that the intent of the words “any person within its jurisdiction” was not to include women or people of homosexual orientation.
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January 3, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The 112th Congress will be officially sworn in on Wednesday, and its work will be fraught with challenges and controversies from the very first. On Wednesday, for instance, the House of Representatives will vote on a rules change that will allow Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan to dictate spending priorities and caps to the entire House and Senate, by disallowing any revision of his rewrite guidelines, should the two chambers fail to reach agreement on a budget resolution. Issues like raising the debt ceiling, implementing START, mortgage and foreclosure reform and expanding medical coverage, will all pit liberal against conservative in a split Congress.
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December 31, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. FEC is guaranteed to be controversial long after the shock of its meaning fades from public consciousness. The ruling effectively gave multinational corporations free rein to spend unlimited sums of money with the specific intent of distorting the public discourse and swaying the democratic process in their favor. Some say it amounts to the death of real democracy in the United States.
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December 30, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
With a new wave of elected officials coming to Capitol Hill next week, there is talk of a shift, at least in the House, to a so-called “all-of-the-above” or “let’s-do-everything” approach to energy policy. The idea sounds reasonable at first glance, because it suggests the maximum available energy will be made available to consumers, which should mean more choice, lower prices, less risk. The truth is: “all-of-the-above” is under-thought, ignores major costs associated with certain resources, and is, therefore, a risky economic strategy.
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December 12, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
David Cameron, who campaigned as a rights-focused, green-conscious Tory, claims a steep rise in tuition fees will be good for Britons educational aspirations; but his plan to triple tuition fees for average British citizens seeking a university education initially led to nationwide protests, student rallies and sit-ins at the Conservative party headquarters. Now, the political crisis has escalated as passage of the tuition fee hikes has provoked violent riots in the streets of London.
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December 7, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The media storm surrounding the personal story of Julian Assange, reputed founder of WikiLeaks, is in many ways a sad commentary on the state of our security policy. The malice directed at Assange, and the coincidental pursuit of him on accusation of sexual assault in Sweden, appear to fit into a campaign designed to dissuade the general public from taking seriously anything produced by WikiLeaks. The fact is: there would be no use for WikiLeaks and no controversy whatsoever, if democratic governments did not rely so heavily on secrecy.
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November 24, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Glen Beck has always had a penchant for the outrageous, the egregious, the outright lie. He has made a career of smears, distortions, even verging on hate-rhetoric. His absurd assertion that his white followers should “take back the civil rights movement”, a phrase whose meaning no one could claim to fully understand, was perhaps a sign of near psychotic hubris. But his most recent “Puppetmaster” series, obsessively defaming George Soros, Holocaust survivor, billionaire philanthropist and democracy activist, as a ‘Nazi’ is a sign that Fox News has left all semblance of morality behind.
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November 14, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The United States government is facing historic budget deficits. A wave of new Republicans are going to Washington, DC, with the idea in mind they will slash “spending”, “shrink the federal workforce” and reduce benefits for “entitlements”, i.e. social programs. What they do not have a way to understand is that the entire budget deficit crisis is a direct result of specific policies enacted by former president George W. Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress of 2001-2006.
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November 13, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The lame duck Congress, with enormous Democratic majorities in both houses, will have to decide what to do about the Bush tax cuts, which are set to expire on the first of January. The Republicans will not take control of the House of Representatives until after the deadline on the Bush tax cuts. The Democratic plan is devoted to two things: the middle class and fiscal responsibility. The Republican plan is devoted to one thing: delivering as much free cash to millionaires as possible, all while ballooning the deficit enormously.
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November 10, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
An incoming Republican member of the House of Representatives, Alan Nunnelee of Mississippi, has said he would hold the U.S. government hostage in order to make sure millions of Americans are stripped of their health insurance and their healthcare rights. The Affordable Care Act, the most important reform to the health insurance markets since Medicare, and the most comprehensive reform in 100 years, bars insurers from denying coverage or treatment due to “pre-existing conditions”, it reduces the federal budget deficit and incentivizes the training of 20,000 new primary care physicians.
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November 8, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
I am not a runner. And I don’t (have not yet) run marathons. But I feel a need to comment on the New York City Marathon, a true celebration of human potential and of the can-do spirit. In a time of economic malaise, when media and politicians alike are trying desperately to reduce expectations and perpetuate the myth that some things are just too hard, even when they are morally right, the New York City Marathon clearly demonstrates how much force and commitment there is behind the idea that “Yes, we can!”
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November 2, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The United States of America is the “wealthiest country in the history of the world”. We hear this repeated so often, it’s almost as if it has become the national slogan. Economists tend to agree that it’s the truth, but that wealth is relative: tens of millions of Americans live in abject poverty, unable to obtain basic sustenance, medical care, adequate education or even basic public safety. One in five children in the United States now live in poverty. Among African American and Hispanic children, the rate is 30 percent.
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October 28, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The political battle over immigration reform is in many ways a shameful commentary on the state of our democracy and the core of our political discourse. We have well over ten million people living in our midst who lack basic access to fundamental rights and protections and who are being vilified and even further marginalized by voices from both sides of the political spectrum. This suggests a shameful, and hypocritical hold-out against living up to the founding ideals of American democracy.
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October 27, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Chuck Hagel, the former Republican senator from Nebraska, writes: “Every variation of public service, including elective office, should be anchored by one complete and overriding truth and objective—to make a better world,” as part of a powerful statement urging civility and good-will from all who seek to involve themselves in the work of public service. Hagel’s open letter to the political world comes at a time when many election observers say the campaign of 2010 is the most degenerate and ill-intentioned in memory, where lies are prevailing over evidence and the ability to commit to effective and relentless distortion has become the most sought-after weapon of campaigners.
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October 25, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Amid disclosures that many of the nation’s major banks not only participated in, but engineered and propagated a system by which the legal paperwork review process was skipped, cut short or literally forged, Bank of America and others now say they “had a right to foreclose”, because borrowers had not been keeping up with payments. They may now resume the foreclosures process, promising that all mistakes “will be corrected”, even as critics say nothing has been done to prevent the same mistakes from occurring.
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October 21, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
David Cameron, the Conservative party leader who heads a coalition UK government in partnership with Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, is forcing record cuts to social spending, slashing the military budget and plans to lay off 500,000 Britons. In an atmosphere where private investment and new hires are both stagnant, such cuts could undermine any economic recovery, however stunted. Critics say the move is ideological and may be intended to consolidate his support among the conservative base.
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October 17, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The accusations, which have emerged from court cases, private and public investigations and internal reporting from the banks themselves, that mortgage lenders have been hastily foreclosing on homeowners without proper review suggests a far deeper problem than previously thought. When reformers talk of fixing the banks or healing the lending industry, they may now have to consider how grossly the nation’s major banks have overcalculated their own worth.
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August 31, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The founding charters of the United States of America were designed to create a system of democratic government in which terms and structures linked to historical exclusions and injustices could be redefined in order to serve a more democratic, more tolerant system of civil government. The argument regarding civil marriage services, provided by government, and the consequent legislative and fiscal benefits assigned to married couples, that traditional “definitions” of marriage should have a bearing on the ruling of the courts do not apply, because they do not allow for the specific Constitutional role of the judiciary: to interpret laws as applied to citizens equally and without prejudice.
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August 1, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
SB1070 is a threat to the freedom and quality of life of all Americans, but first to Arizonans. The law’s draconian anti-immigrant provisions, —which not only include random stops based on “reasonable suspicion” (clearly an indication that visual profiling is required) but also a form of domestic “extraordinary rendition”, or prisoner transfer out of jurisdiction with no judicial oversight— are an attack on basic Constitutional freedoms that protect all U.S. citizens.
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July 21, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The story of Shirley Sherrod illustrates how injustice and prejudice will flood the scene whenever we give in to a pathological aversion to nuance. Our media culture, our politics, the headline-obsessed pseudo-reporting that passes for “mainstream journalism”, allow loud-mouthed bigots and propagandists like Andrew Breitbart to pervert our free press and ruin lives. Fortunately, the media picked up the mistake, and the White House responded to Sherrod’s resigning with a call for a thorough investigation of the facts surrounding the incident.
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June 16, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
There is nothing ideological about the issue of renewable energy resources. Proponents tend to care about the health of the natural environment, which motivates their wish to see renewables replace high-polluting resources like oil and coal, but the technologies, the fact of their economic viability and their usefulness for society at large, are not in any way a matter of ideology.
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