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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (96188)	7/7/2011 3:24:35 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 149317

Has Murdoch overstepped his bounds? Murdoch’s News of the World implodes under scandal Rupert Murdoch has been at the center of some serious media scandals, but nothing on par with this. The tabloid at the center of the British phone hacking is to be closed after a final, ad-free Sunday edition this weekend, according to a top official at News Corp., James Murdoch, in a sudden statement that underscored the devastating effect of allegations that targets included not only a 13-year-old murder victim but also relatives of fallen soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. […] The new reports of stunning intrusions came a day after Britain’s Parliament collectively turned on Rupert Murdoch, the head of the News Corporation, which owns The News of the World, and the tabloid culture he represents, using a debate about the widening phone hacking scandal to denounce reporting tactics by newspapers once seen as too politically influential to challenge. The phone-hacking scandals aren’t new, but the targets have traditionally been celebrities. Attitudes changed quickly when the public learned the paper intercepted messages from a murdered girl’s phone and the family members of terrorist victims. The scandal intensified this week following reports that Rebekah Brooks, the British head of News Corp., had been confronted with evidence that The News of the World “was using unlawful means to interrupt a murder investigation whose two main suspects had ties to the paper.” The scope of the scandal may not end with the demise of this one newspaper. Murdoch’s News Corp. owns several leading British newspapers, and Murdoch is in talks to take over the television company British Sky Broadcasting. Indeed, News Corp. had become so powerful in the country, the New York Times noted that “politicians and police officers walked in fear of it, fearing its disclosures and courting its support.” Not only is that no longer the case, but the scandals appear to have broken a dam, leading to a flood of new allegations, including News Corp. possibly bribing police and lying to Parliament. A conservative lawmaker, whose party has benefited from Murdoch’s contributions, said this week, “Rupert Murdoch is clearly a very, very talented businessman — he’s possibly even a genius — but his organization has grown too powerful and has abused that power. It has systematically corrupted the police and in my view has gelded this Parliament, to our shame.” Eric Boehlert explained this morning, before the announcement about the newspaper’s demise, that the larger fiasco “has the possible makings of a career-defining debacle for the partisan media mogul.”

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (96188)	7/7/2011 7:13:01 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 149317

She looks excited...like she can't wait to meet the world again. Casey Anthony release set for next week The Florida mother was acquitted of killing daughter Casey Anthony, 2. She is sentenced to four years in prison and fined more than $4,000 for lying but will go free with credit for time served and other factors.

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (96188)	7/8/2011 5:22:44 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 149317

If the public sector weren’t shedding jobs The federal government can’t force private employers to hire people; businesses will invest when they see fit. But the feds have considerable influence over the public-sector job market, and as David Leonhardt explained today, officials in Washington are deliberately making “an unforced economic error.” Federal payrolls have been roughly flat for years (even as the population has been growing). But state and local payrolls grew over the last decade, by almost 20,000 jobs a month on average. Since the crisis began and state and local taxes began plummeting, though, governments began to cut back. At first, the federal government stepped in, with the 2009 stimulus bill, and sent fiscal aid to states. Then the aid stopped. In round numbers, state and local governments have cut about a half million jobs over the last two years. If they had continued to hire at their previous pace — expanding as the population expanded — they would have added about a half million jobs. In other words, the state and local austerity of the last two years has cost the economy about one million jobs. Those one million employees could still be on the job, if Congress simply chose to rescue the state and local governments. But there’s no political will to do so. The stimulus prevented a lot of these losses, but that was before, and those funds are now gone. Indeed, it’s important to remember that these job losses are, in the eyes of Republicans, a positive development. Under the GOP economic model, the public sector is supposed to lose jobs, and as part of the party’s austerity agenda, this is a problem that must get worse on purpose. State and local governments can’t run large deficits*, so they’re forced to balance their budgets by laying off teachers, police officers, firefighters, etc. Those laid off workers, in turn, rely on unemployment benefits — which Republicans also want to cut — to try to get by, and have no choice but to spend less, thereby hurting the local economies, too. The job losses, in other words, have a ripple effect. All of this is easily preventable, but our jobs crisis is partly the result of our political crisis. Congress can choose to spend the money to keep these workers on the job, but it runs counter to Republican philosophy, and therefore doesn’t happen. These identical Republicans then complain bitterly when unemployment gets worse, and blames Democrats for the job losses the GOP chose not to prevent. Worse, Republicans then try to persuade the public that “out-of-control spending” is to blame for the weak economy. It’s quite a feedback loop.