By Russ Baker on October 24, 2009
Here’s an odd thing: the muscular US Chamber of Commerce, long a force for extreme big-business values, fighting off universal health insurance, minimum wage increases, global warming action and the like, is actually much smaller than it makes itself out to be. According to Mother Jones reporter Josh Harkinson, the Chamber, aided and abetted by news [...]
Posted in The Digest
| Tagged big-business, Congress, extreme self-inflation, universal health care, US Chamber of Commerce
|
By Russ Baker on October 14, 2009
So, the Cheney family is fanning out on all fronts. Younger daughter Mary is setting up a new family-run DC strategic consulting firm, modeled on Henry Kissinger’s. Eldest daughter Liz is partnering up in a new advocacy group called “Keep America Safe.” And both, together with their father, are on the hustings attacking President Obama…
Posted in The Digest
| Tagged Dick Cheney, Henry Kissinger, keeping america safe, Mary Cheney, national security, President Obama
|
By Russ Baker on October 5, 2009
The New York Times lead story describes how a series of private equity firms managed to repeatedly flip the venerable Simmons mattress company, earning themselves huge profits while the company became increasingly mired in debt and ultimately forced into bankruptcy and massive layoffs, with ordinary investors, employees, and company retirees taking a huge hit.
I thought it [...]
Posted in The Digest
| Tagged bankruptcy, Barack Obama, charities, Democratic Party, Forbes, Harvard University, leveraged buyouts, New York Times, NYU Medical Center, private equity, Simmons, Thomas H. Lee, William J. Clinton Foundation
|
By Russ Baker on October 1, 2009
Yesterday’s New York Times represented a kind of quiet sea change. A front-page article addressed the quality of intelligence analyses of Iran’s nuclear intentions, against the background of the West’s mounting confrontation with Tehran. Unlike the largely credulous articles written by Judith Miller and others that provided crucial fodder for justifying the invasion of Iraq [...]
Posted in The Digest
| Tagged CIA, Gary Sick, Glenn Greenwald, Iran, Journalism, Judith Miller, New York Times, nuclear power, nuclear weapons, Qum facility, Salon, WMDs
|
By Russ Baker on September 23, 2009
Two large debit-card issuers have suddenly decided to clean up their acts in the face of pending legislative action against them. The bigger question is: what’s to prevent them from pulling a bait and switch, first voluntarily revising their rapacious practices and then, when the threat of legislation dies down, ramping those practices right back [...]
Posted in The Digest
| Tagged Bank of America, banking, banking reform, banks, debit cards, finance, financial reform, JPMorgan Chase, New York Times, Ron Lieber
|
By Russ Baker on September 18, 2009
Conservative activists and talk show hosts, continuing a crusade begun during the presidential campaign, have been calling for their compatriots to dig up dirt on appointees and beneficiaries of Obama administration funding. The result has been an effort by the Democrats to quickly blunt any controversy by terminating links with anyone deemed controversial.
Recently, a low-level White [...]
Posted in The Digest
| Tagged 9/11, ACORN, Barack Obama, Census Bureau, Claude Allen, conservative politics, Daniel Ellsberg, Democratic Party, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Fox News, George W. Bush, Glenn Beck, Karl Rove, New York Times, Van Jones
|
By Russ Baker on September 13, 2009
There’s a fascinating political-media brouhaha going on in Italy that is a kind of turbocharged mega-Lewinsky scandal, but it is getting comparatively little coverage in the United States. One of the country’s leading newspapers is challenging Silvio Berlusconi, the 72-year-old Italian prime minister as to the nature of a relationship he began in 2008 with [...]
Posted in The Digest
| Tagged Corriere del Mezzogiorno, George W. Bush, Iraq, Italy, La Repubblica, media, political scandal, sex scandal, Silvio Berlusconi, Veronica Lario, weapons of mass destruction
|
By Russ Baker on September 1, 2009
On August 20, while scanning the New York Times the old-fashioned way, i.e. on paper, I stopped to look at a small article, no bigger than a long paragraph, tucked away in a column full of short items called “National Briefing.” The headline read: “Mercury Found in Every Fish Tested, Scientists Say”.
I stopped to read, [...]
Posted in The Digest
| Tagged Barack Obama, coal, coal industry, coal-fired power plants, Congress, contamination, emissions, energy, Environmental Protection Agency, fish, mercury, New York Times, Reuters, U.S. Geological Survey
|
By Russ Baker on August 19, 2009
The New York Times has a surprisingly direct, no-hedging, exposé of oil industry shenanigans designed to block climate change legislation. For once, it is crystal clear to readers what is going on—the oil industry is rallying workers whose (understandable) immediate concerns do not extend beyond continuing to earn a living, to . . . preserving [...]
Posted in The Digest
| Tagged astroturfing, big oil, carbon credits, climate change, emissions, global warming, Houston, New York Times, oil industry, Texas, town halls
|
By Russ Baker on August 17, 2009
The other day, the New York Times got around to a bit of investigation into the origins of false information about health insurance reform. But just a bit—not nearly enough.
The stubborn yet false rumor that President Obama’s health care proposals would create government-sponsored “death panels” to decide which patients were worthy of living seemed to arise [...]
Posted in The Digest
| Tagged Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, death panels, health care, health care reform, health insurance, New York Times, special interests, town hall meetings, Washington Times
|
Photograph by JOSHUA LOTT - The New York Times Redux
