NYT to News Dissector: No Thanks, Going, Going….Day 2 Of Supremes on Healthcare, JOBS Bill Passes
March 28th, 2012 - by: Danny
Read: NYTeXaminer.com– My recent “pitch” to, and rejection by, The New York Times Watch: I am part of a debate on the impact of Occupy Wall Street on RT’s Cross-Talk program. ——————————————————————————————————— Healthcare Bill Said To Be In High Court Trouble (•Wasn’t it predictable that a Court Packed with right-wingers would want to kill the bill?) WASHINGTON (AP) – The fate of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul was cast into deeper jeopardy Tuesday as the Supreme Court’s conservative justices sharply and repeatedly questioned its core requirement that virtually every American carry insurance. Boston Globe: One of the classic closing arguments in any presidential campaign – which candidates ALWAYS cast as “the most important of our lifetime” – is that the outcome could dictate the balance of power on the US Supreme Court. As arbiter of the nation’s most contentious legal disputes, and as interpreters of that living document known as the Constitution, the court plays a critical role in US governance. Citizens are getting a reminder right now. For perhaps the first time since the Bush v. Gore case in 2000, the populace is paying real time attention to the court as it hears oral arguments in the legal challenge to President Obama’s health care overhaul. A decision is expected about June. NYT: Few Contingencies if Court Strikes Down Law DS: This impacts l out 6 Americans without Health Insurance, Nearly 50 Million people! Who on the Court is concerned about them? Who among those with health care is worrying about those without? AP: Loss Of Mandates May Not Kill Bill The Hill: GOP up, Dems down after Supreme Court arguments on health law mandate Republican lawmakers leaving oral arguments before the Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed that the government will have a tough time finding a fifth justice to uphold the health law’s individual mandate. Democrats for their part found solace in pointed questioning of lawyers on both sides of the argument by Justices Anthony Kennedy and Chief Justice John Roberts. Their outlook coming out of the court, however, was visibly less sunny than the Republicans’. Day Two of the Supreme Court Hearings on the Health Care “reform” NYT: David Leonhardt: On Health Care Law, a Familiar Divide Many legal scholars, including some conservatives, have been predicting that the Supreme Court will uphold the 2010 health care overhaul. But after Tuesday’s arguments, when several justices asked skeptical questions about the heart of the law, a political lens seemed relevant, too. When Congress passed the law, 9 out of 10 Democrats voted for it, while not a single Republican, in either the House or the Senate, did so. In the lower courts, judges appointed by Democratic presidents voted mostly — but not entirely — to uphold the law. And judges appointed by Republican presidents voted mostly — but not entirely — to overturn at least part of it. It is obviously too early to know what the Supreme Court will do, despite the rush of commentary after Tuesday’s much-watched hearing. But skeptical questions from the bench are often an indicator of how justices will ultimately vote — and many court experts expressed surprise at the apparent agreement among the conservatives, including Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the likeliest swing vote. National Journal Justice Anthony Kennedy is generally seen as a swing vote in the Supreme Court’s consideration of challenges to the health care law, and he offered some tough questions for the Obama administration, which is defending the need to make people get health insurance or pay a penalty. Meanwhile, Outside… Tea Party Patriots jostled with supporters of the Obama administration’s health care reforms in front of the Supreme Court today, the crowds swelling until they spilled over onto the Capitol grounds on the second day of oral arguments about the law.” Columbia Journalism Review: When former governor Mitt Romney signed Massachusetts’ health care reforms into law in 2006, he praised the effort as “a Republican way of reforming the market.” With the national Affordable Care Act before the Supreme Court and Romney pledging to end “Obamacare,” Trudy Lieberman traces the candidate’s path from his former opinion to his current one—and notes that campaign coverage might have done the same. Washington Post: Gingrich shakes up campaign, cuts staff Newt Gingrich is cutting one-third of his full-time campaign staff and replacing his manager as part of an effort to sustain his presidential campaign, a Gingrich spokesman said Tuesday. Economy The Atlantic: Occupy Goes To School Kwak writes: “I created a new “Debt for Beginners” page on the White House Burning website. It’s a collection of previous articles, mainly written for a general audience, on deficits, the national debt, government spending, taxes, and the politics thereof. It’s intended as a starting point for people who want to get up to speed on these issues. CLG: Nuclear Alert in Japan Japan nuclear reactor has fatally high radiation, no water – Tuesday’s examination with an industrial endoscope detected radiation levels up to 10 times the fatal dose inside the chamber.///One of Japan’s crippled nuclear reactors still has fatally high radiation levels and hardly any water to cool the No. 2 reactor, according to an internal examination Tuesday that renews doubts about the plant’s stability. Plant officials previously said more than half of melted fuel has breached the core and dropped to the floor of the primary containment vessel, some of it splashing against the wall or the floor. Particles from melted fuel have probably sent radiation levels up to dangerously high 70 sieverts per hour inside the container, said Junichi Matsumoto, spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power Co. Guardian: General Strike Planned in Spain Polls say only 30% of the employed will take part on Friday, but it will also be what the Occupy movement calls an ‘invisible’ strike.’ Spain is about to experience huge austerity cuts that may Portside/Alternet: “Fired For Short Skirt: Anti Labor Laws in Ohio and Wisconsin Media Fluent News: ‘Sarkozy urges media not to show Merah shootings video’ Al Jazeera Nixes Video: Here’s How The Channel Reports Its Decision NYT: AlJazeera decides against showing video made by gunman in Toulouse Recorded by a gunman in southwestern France as he killed seven people at close range, and later sent to the satellite broadcaster Al Jazeera by mail, the video captured a ruthlessness that shocked even hardened journalists accustomed to such disturbing images. “Not like this — this is different,” said Salah Negm, a chief news director at Al Jazeera and among the ultimate arbiters for the news operation on broadcasting such footage. As the police surrounded him during a nearly 31-hour standoff, the killer, Mohammed Merah, boasted to the authorities that his grisly recordings would soon be seen by the public. But on Tuesday the Qatar-based network decided that it would not be showing the videotaped murders, a ruling that some saw as a big shift for a station that had once been viewed in the West as a conduit for propaganda from Al Qaeda. The decision, made at the very top of the sprawling international network, provided an opportunity for Al Jazeera to display its journalistic restraint at a time of management upheaval and accusations of a double standard in its coverage of uprisings in the Middle East. Huffington Post: Geraldo Rivera Apologizes for Trayvon Comments—sort of. World News AJE: Cuba rejects pope’s plea for political reform Truth-Out: FBI Targeting Anonymous NEW YORK – For several years, the FBI’s San Francisco office conducted a “Mosque Outreach” program through which it collected and illegally stored intelligence about American Muslims’ First Amendment-protected beliefs and religious practices, according to government documents released today by the American Civil Liberties Union from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the ACLU of Northern California, Asian Law Caucus and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. The San Francisco FBI’s own documents show that it recorded Muslim religious leaders’ and congregants’ identities, personal information and religious views and practices. The documents also show that the FBI labeled this information as “positive intelligence” and disseminated it to other government agencies, placing the people and organizations involved at risk of greater law enforcement scrutiny as potential national security threats. None of the documents indicate that the FBI told individuals interviewed that their information and views were being collected as intelligence and would be recorded and disseminated. Defense News: Israel Wants More Military Aid Guardian: Jerusalem is at the heart of the Palestinian struggle The traditional center of Palestinian social, religious and economic life is increasingly being isolated by Israeli policies Jane Fonda To Play Nancy Reagan in New Film LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – The right wing is going to love this: Jane Fonda, whose outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War continues to enrage conservatives, will play former first lady Nancy Reagan in Lee Daniels’ “The Butler.” “The Butler” is a sprawling historical drama that centers on Eugene Allen, a black man who worked as butler in the White House under eight presidents. Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker (“The Last King of Scotland”) is slated to play Allen. Oprah Winfrey, Hugh Jackman and Liam Neeson are among the other big names who are circling roles in the project. Daniels earned an Oscar nomination for directing “Precious” and is currently directing “The Paperboy” with Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron. Fonda’s performance would be a supporting one, because the film spans decades, chronicling Allen’s years in the White House from 1952 all the way up to 1986, when the Reagans inhabited the White House. Naked Capitalism: Obama’s World Bank Nominee Challenged The US nominee to lead the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, has come under attack for editing a book called “Dying for Growth.” It apparently performs the cardinal sins of questioning whether a relentless pursuit of growth produces necessarily produces good outcomes and taking issue with neoliberalism. From the Financial Times: “Dr Kim would be the first World Bank president ever who seems to be anti-growth,” said William Easterly, professor of economics at New York University. “Even the severest of World Bank critics like me think that economic growth is what we want.” Dr Kim, who is president of Dartmouth College and a former head of the HIV/Aids program at the World Health Organization, was a surprise pick for the top job at the World Bank, which traditionally goes to a US citizen. “…the JOBS Act’s primary theme is dramatically reducing transparency in securities law. If there is any nearly universal principle that writers about the ongoing global crisis emphasized that we needed to learn it was the exceptional virtue of transparency. Greater transparency makes private market discipline possible, it greatly enhances regulatory effectiveness, it discourages fraud, and it aids investors in making decisions. The JOBS Act repeatedly embraces opaqueness. We have known for millennia that this increases fraud. NYT: March Madness in the Air HOUSTON — The captain of a JetBlue flight from New York to Las Vegas suffered a bizarre midair breakdown on Tuesday morning, forcing passengers to restrain him as the plane made an emergency landing in Amarillo, Tex., where he was removed from the aircraft and hospitalized. Passengers said the captain of Flight 191 was seen acting erratically outside the cockpit and could be heard shouting about Al Qaeda and bombs being aboard the plane. Gabriel Schonzeit, a passenger seated in the third row, told The Amarillo Globe-News that about two hours outside Las Vegas, the captain left the cockpit. “It seemed that something was off with him,” Mr. Schonzeit said in a video clip posted on the newspaper’s Web site, adding, “Within a short period of time, he started screaming about Al Qaeda and possibly a bomb on the plane and Iraq and Iran and how we’re all going down.”” News From Common Dreams.org: Rainforest Action Network: Over 1000 to Protest Bank of America at Shareholder Meeting Public Citizen: New York Assembly Committee Approves Resolution Calling for a Constitutional Amendment to Overturn Citizens United ACLU: ACLU To Testify at Congressional Forum on Trayvon Martin Case Salon: How Mandela United A Nation Mail & Guardian: Mandela Digital Archive Now Online DXM tweets: Were you taking (to) the streets in the 1960s? Ben Marks looks at some of the parallels. Letter: Sandra Nasser writes about an interview I gave to RT on AIPAC v J Street I just heard Mr. Schechter on television speaking about the influence of AIPAC in congress. To hear Schechter mention a one state solution as a possible solution to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict was revolutionary. Clearly that is the only solution for how can a state call itself a democracy yet insist on being a Jewish State. Thank you for your good work. Please continue to dissect the news and help to get the truth to the people.” And Thanks to all who write. Getting feedback is very meaningful to me. Share yours at dissector@mediachannel.org. Also visit Mediachannel1.org
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Bloomberg Newsview: So, Tuesday was the high-drama moment for Obamacare at the Supreme Court, and the defense came up a bit short in the vegetable department. “What’s the difference between broccoli and health insurance?” asks View columnist Noah Feldman. “The fate of President Barack Obama’s health-care plan rests on this question, which Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia pressed on Solicitor General Don Verrilli. There is a good answer. Unfortunately, in oral arguments before the court Tuesday, Verrilli faltered in giving it.” Uh-oh, guess who didn’t clear his plate … “Verrilli’s failure to offer a sharp distinction could be disastrous for the government’s case,” insists Feldman. “Scalia’s vote was probably lost already. But Justice Anthony Kennedy was listening intently, and a similar question was bothering him.”
Hope Springs….
In These Times: Finally, OWS Gets Police to Arrest the People in Suits
Check out the New White House is Burning website by James Kwak and Simon Johnson.
Spain’s general strike is also a day of action for the 99%
prove explosive. On Friday Mariano Rajoy, the prime minister,
is set to announce what even he describes as a “very, very
austere budget” to reduce the deficit. According to El Pas,
the EU is demanding cuts larger than those of Greece, Ireland
or Portugal: “There is no comparable adjustment in [our]
economic history,” says the paper.
Fluent News: ”Red terror’: Bo Xilai’s crime crackdown deepens China scandal’
FBI’s Activities Raise Constitutional Concerns and Violate Federal Privacy Law, ACLU Says
Discussing AIPAC versus J Street
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After winning Oscars for films “Klute” and “Coming Home,” Fonda
Some economists are arguing that Dying for Growth, jointly edited by Dr Kim and published in 2000, puts too great a focus on health policy over broader economic growth.
Little is known about his views on economic policy because his background is in health. But if he cannot set out a strong vision for how the World Bank will fuel growth, it may boost the campaigns of heavyweight rivals such as Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the Nigerian finance minister and former World Bank managing director.
Congress Passes JOBS Act With White House Support: Bill Black Calls it “Insane”
Madiba in The News
☛ http://ow.ly/9UUEI
I want to thank him for his honesty and mostly for his courage for not many people out there dare speak about Israel and there true intentions.
- About Danny Schechter
Danny Schechter is an Emmy award winning journalist, television producer and independent filmmaker who also writes, blogs and speaks about media issues.
His latest film is PLUNDER The Crime Of Our Time.
Mr. Schechter is NOT the Godfather of Soul.
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