Tonight, my dog Pluto and I watched the PBS ‘Frontline’ investigation of BP, “The Spill.”
PBS has uncovered a real shocker: BP neglected safety!
Well, no shit, Sherlock!
Pluto rolled over on the rug and looked at me as if to say, Don’t we already know this?
Then PBS told us — get ready — that BP has neglected warnings about oil safety for years!That’s true. But so has PBS. The Petroleum Broadcast System has turned a blind eye to BP perfidy for decades.
Why do you think they keep voting for Chavez for all his flaws? He has delivered something for those in need–all of which Frontlline never once mentioned, specifically
(a)his government health program for people who normally could not afford a doctor, (b)the dental program in which hundreds of thousands of poor have seen a dentist for the first time;(c)the subsidized food programs managed thru neighborhood coops run mostly by women,(d)the school lunch programs and no-fee schools for thousands of poor kids, (e)the job programs–admittedly inadequate in scope and duration–to clean up and repair poor neighborhoods, and (f)the loans to small businesses run by women.
All we got from your show was a focus on the man and the elections and not a word about the economic content of his “revolution.”
In The Hugo Chávez Show, FRONTLINE producer Ofra Bikel travels to Venezuela to offer an illuminating portrait of the Venezuelan president. Through interviews with former government officials, Chávez associates and ordinary Venezuelans, FRONTLINE chronicles Chávez’s ascent to power and his efforts to use the powers of the presidency to stay there.
The film also reveals the key role of the media—or, rather, Chávez’s savvy use of the media—in his rise to power. This report begins by introducing viewers to Aló Presidente—or “Hello, President”—a weekly televised show that often runs five to eight hours and features Chávez speaking directly to the people, explaining government policy and mixing in a smattering of songs, poetry and whatever else strikes his fancy.
“Chávez is easily caricatured because he can be funny; he can seem buffoonish on his Aló Presidente,” journalist Jon Lee Anderson tells FRONTLINE. “He sings; he gets involved in wordplay. … He’s probably the world’s first virtual president in the age of the communication revolution.”
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Five years after the invasion of Iraq, Scott McClellan, formerly White House press secretary and one of President George W. Bush’s closest advisors, has published a tell-all book with little new information about the propaganda campaign and the role of the press in selling the war. On this week’s JOURNAL, Bill Moyers talks to three prominent journalists to find out why the book is such big news and whether anything has changed.
Bill Moyers speaks with Greg Mitchell, editor of the influential magazine about the newspaper industry, EDITOR & PUBLISHER, and two members from McClatchy’s Washington Bureau, one of the few news outlets to aggressively question the administration’s case for invading Iraq: John Walcott, the bureau chief and John Landay, senior national security and intelligence correspondent. …
What happens now? That’s the question campaign watchers, Democratic Party operatives and voters are asking. The Annenberg School’s Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Dr. Ronald Walters, director of the African American Leadership Institute and Scholar Practitioner Program at the University of Maryland, contemplate what’s next for Obama, Clinton and the rest of the election cycle.
When he appeared on the JOURNAL on December 14, 2007, Dr. Ronald Walters said this about Senator Obama’s chances of becoming president of the United States:
“Mathematically and analytically there’s the chance, yes, that he could win. When you look at the history of this country and the history of racism and race in particular there is a huge, huge doubt that he will eventually become president of the United States.”
In this weeks BILL MOYERS JOURNAL, Rose Ann Demaro, the Executive Director of the California Nurses Association, argued that calling America’s approach to health care a “system” is innaccurate.If you look at health care in America, there is no health care “system.” There’s a health care industry thats major objective is profit-making — which means not providing the patient all of the care that they need, discharging patients early, patients without insurance being treated differently than wealthy people, frankly. And that is the health care “system” in America. Those who can afford it get to live and those who can’t suffer needlessly.
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In his new book, TORTURE TEAM: RUMSFELD’S MEMO AND THE BETRAYAL OF AMERICAN VALUES, Philippe Sands draws on official documents and interviews with key players to explain how the U.S. Military went from interrogations strictly regulated by the U.S. ARMY FIELD MANUAL 34-52 to enhanced interrogations that included sleep deprivation, nudity, stress positions, and water boarding.
As Sands explains in an interview with Scott Horton in THE NEW REPUBLIC:
When the administration released the December 2002 and other memos, it told a story that essentially said this: The new interrogation techniques came from the bottom up and had nothing to do with policy decisions driven from the top. I wanted to explore the truth of that account, by trying to talk to as many of the people involved in the decision as I could.
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This month, millions of Americans are filing their taxes and hoping for the best, but are rich people actually paying a smaller percentage of taxes than the poor? NOW looks at plans in many states to raise sales taxes and lower property taxes in an effort to generate revenue. But those changes may come at an even bigger price. Anti-poverty advocates say this shift would place the heaviest tax burden on the poorest households – and benefit higher-income Americans. Despite the charge, it’s a model many states have long embraced.
NOW travels to one of these states, Alabama, to document the personal impact of regressive tax policies on three very different families. They include a working mom who shows us how a ten percent sales tax on groceries makes a significant difference in what her family eats; a couple living in a ramshackle house in the backwoods, who’ve always held jobs but still face hunger; and a well-to-do suburban couple who benefit from huge tax breaks.
Are taxes being levied fairly when it comes to the rich and the poor?
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Undoubtedly, the daily grind of congressional hearings passes by most Americans unremarked and probably unseen. Only the most high-profile will make the evening news. But they are the very stuff of government.
BILL MOYERS JOURNAL looks back at a years-worth of hearings held by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the investigative arm of the House, and speaks with the Committee Chair, Representative Henry Waxman, about the Committee’s role in the government:
“It’s almost like having a policeman on the beat. If no one thinks they’re being watched and being held accountable, they think they can get away with anything.”
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Bloomberg News reported on October 10, 2001 that after leaving Congress, Charlie Wilson was employed by Pakistan as a lobbyist for which he was paid $30,000 per month. Previously he had been lobbying on behalf of Israeli weapons manufacturers and took over the Pakistani account from Jack Abramoff.
BILL MOYERS: Hollywood last year gave us a record number of movies about war and terrorism but there’s one film we’ll see at the Oscar’s this Sunday night that tells us more about the enemy we’re fighting than it ever intended. CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR was described by its star, Tom Hanks, as a “serious comedy”. It portrays a fun-and-freedom loving communist-loathing Texas congressman, who with the help of earmarks, slipped hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into a covert war against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan back in the 1980s.
While the movie has a happy Hollywood ending, the story wasn’t over when the Afghans drove the Russians from their country. In 1988, CBS documented the real Congressman Wilson during a trip to Afghanistan where he was filmed presenting arms to the mujahideen. He even tried one on for size.Those mujahideen fighters did whip the Russians, thanks to the deadly weapons Wilson helped them acquire, especially stinger missiles that brought down Soviet helicopters. But in time those freedom fighters became the Al Qaeda and Taliban who ran Afghanistan as a theocracy and a training camp for Osama bin Laden’s suicide bombers.
Now both the Taliban and Al Qaeda are back… And it’s Americans, not Russians, they want to kill. The war is not going well for Americans and our NATO allies… This week was one of the deadliest yet. Suicide bombings in the country’s largest cities–Kabul and Kandahar–killed over 130 Afghan civilians. The attacks occurred soon after the frank assessment of an independent non-partisan study group that said, in its opening statement: “make no mistake, NATO is not winning in Afghanistan.” The report lays the blame for the lack of progress on “too few military forces and insufficient economic aid,” and calls for “immediate action and attention in order to prevent a setback to regional and global security.” With conditions worsening Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice dropped in for a surprise visit earlier this month and as usual offered a cheery diagnosis.
BILL MOYERS: If William Shakespeare were around I suspect he might describe the recent flap between the Obama and Clinton camps as much ado about nothing or a tempest in a teapot. Senator Clinton was heard to say that it took a president – Lyndon Johnson – to consummate the work of Martin Luther King by passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Almost no one in the media bothered to run the whole quote. Here it is:
HILLARY CLINTON: Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the president before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done”
BILL MOYERS: There was nothing in that quote about race. It was an historical fact, an affirmation of the obvious. But critics pounced. THE NEW YORK TIMES published a lead editorial accusing Senator Clinton of “the distasteful implication that a black man needed the help of a white man to effect change.” Suddenly we had a rhetorical inferno on our hands, with charges flying left and right, and pundits throwing gasoline on the tiniest of embers. Fortunately the furor has quieted down, and everyone’s said they’re sorry, except THE NEW YORK TIMES. But I can’t resist this footnote to the story.
With all the talk of change coming out of the campaigns, can we expect big money to lose its grip on Washington? Bill Moyers interviews NEW YORK TIMES investigative reporter and Pulitzer Prize-winner David Cay Johnston who says America’s system has been rigged to benefit the super-rich.
Johnston is the best-selling author of PERFECTLY LEGAL: THE COVERT CAMPAIGN TO RIG OUR TAX SYSTEM TO BENEFIT THE SUPER RICH–AND CHEAT EVERYBODY ELSE. Johnston’s latest book, FREE LUNCH: HOW THE WEALTHIEST AMERICANS ENRICH THEMSELVES AT GOVERNMENT EXPENSE AND STICK YOU WITH THE BILL, explores the power of lobbyists and wealthy donors to manipulate government policies such as regulation, taxes, and subsidies to enrich themselves at tax-payers’ expense.
Decades ago Ronald Reagan borrowed a phrase from a founding father often overlooked. He rallied his party at the Republican National Convention with these patriotic words: “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”
Calling for a revolution, Reagan chose those words from the writings of America’s first great radical, and its first best selling writer. His name was Thomas Paine. Over two centuries ago this month, Paine’s most famous book, COMMON SENSE, sold what today would be fifty million copies. Farmers in the fields stopped to read it.
As President Bush winds up what will probably be one of his final trips to the Middle East, Bill Moyers sits down with journalist Craig Unger, contributing editor of VANITY FAIR and author of the best-selling HOUSE OF BUSH, HOUSE OF SAUD and, most recently, THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF BUSH for some analysis.
“Well, this is the story essentially of the oil addict coming to the dealer and not being treated too well. Yes, there’s a lot of fine ceremony on the surface. But … I think it’s very unlikely that those oil prices will go down or that the Saudis are really in a position to help Bush fulfill his vision of reshaping the Middle East.”
On January 3, 2008, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley announced that President George W. Bush was embarking on an eight day trip to the Middle East starting on January 8th.
Bill Moyers talks with Shelby Steele, who has written widely on race in American society and is author of the recent book A BOUND MAN: WHY WE ARE EXCITED ABOUT OBAMA AND WHY HE CAN’T WIN.
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At the intersection of the Internet and politics, presidential candidate Ron Paul’s supporters are rewriting the rules of political campaigns. NOW explores how the Texas congressman and his supporters are using the Internet to attract voters—and massive campaign contributions—from across the political spectrum. Supporters include anti-war progressives, anti-tax libertarians, civil libertarians, and even some white supremacists. The common theme is anger over where the country is heading.
“Ron Paul’s campaign is so extraordinary to many of us because even while it was getting massive online traffic, you’d be lucky to get a whisper of his campaign in a lot of media outlets,” said Zephyr Teachout, Howard Dean’s former online organizer and now a Duke University professor.
In this extended interview, NOW talks with Zephyr Teachout, the former director of online organizing for Howard Dean’s presidential campaign and current Visiting Assistant Professor at Duke University Law School. Teachout compares Paul’s campaign to Dean’s 2004 run. She also explains what Ron Paul’s campaign is doing right with the Internet and what other campaigns can learn from Paul.
NOW: How might Ron Paul supporters change the way a candidate is judged?
ZEPHYR TEACHOUT: One of the things I love about the Ron Paul campaign is how it challenges mainstream media’s idea of what are the right metrics of a serious candidate. Typically the mainstream and the blogosphere media says, “Well, somebody’s serious if they raise a lot of money.” Well, Ron Paul’s raised a lot of money. Somebody’s serious if they get over four percent in the polls. When he’s getting over eight percent now in New Hampshire polls. But there’s still this real resistance to calling him a serious candidate.
So he’s challenging our ideas of how we measure seriousness. For the past 30 years we have started to think about measuring seriousness in large part because of measuring seriousness through money, in large part because of the cost of TV ads. But what that’s meant is that you raise money as a candidate in order to get taken seriously by the mainstream media.
And the value of raising money is more in the earned media, than it is in the actual ad buys itself. We saw that with Howard Dean. He raised millions of dollars in a single day. He spent those millions of dollars on ads, but earned tens of millions of dollars in free media and earned what in campaigns you call “earned media.”
And campaigns are very aware of this. And I think it’s sad, because we don’t actually want to live in a polity where how much money you can raise determines seriousness. And I like the challenge that this is posing.
I think it will force all of us to go to different metrics. When Ron Paul’s supporters say, “Well, we have more YouTube views than about else,” and The New York Times says, “Well so and so raised more money than anybody else”, it’s not clear why we should—as democrats—small-“d” democrats value one more than the other. One measures people’s attention online, one measures how much money they’re willing to give. Which is often a proxy for wealth. So maybe we have to reconsider that.
In October 2002, Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) talked with Bill Moyers about his stand on the situation in Iraq, and the 35 questions he wanted to see addressed by Congress before going to war. As Paul prepares to speak at the 2004 Libertarian Party Convention, he joins Bill Moyers by satellite to address what he thinks are the key issues in the upcoming election and how he sees the war in Iraq.
I apologize for losing about 30secs of footage due to rain fade, I will try to catch it when it is on again later to fill the gap.
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PBS NOW: Alaskan Oil, Politics & the Corrupt Bastards Club
Two state legislators have been convicted in Federal court for accepting bribes from VECO. The FBI has video and audio evidence that reveal VECO executives shockingly handing out cash to those legislators in exchange for promises to roll back a tax on the oil industry. But that may only be the tip of the oily iceberg. NOW’s Maria Hinojosa learns that dozens more lawmakers are being eyed in the growing scandal, including one of the country’s most powerful politicians, Alaska U.S. Senator Ted Stevens.
As the United States and Iran are locked in a battle for power and influence across the Middle East — with the fear of an Iranian nuclear weapon looming in the background — FRONTLINE gains unprecedented access to Iranian hard-liners shaping government policy, including parliament leader Hamid Reza Hajibabaei, National Security Council member Mohammad Jafari and state newspaper editor Hossein Shariatmadari.
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Dandelion Salad 